


the dark of your body

by specficslut (homosociality)



Series: the dark of your body [1]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alpha Charles Xavier, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Angst with a Happy Ending, Erik Lehnsherr Cries His Way Through Sex, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Forced Bonding, Forced Pregnancy, Hurt Erik Lehnsherr, Hurt/Comfort, Knotting, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Omega Erik Lehnsherr, Rape, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:21:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 76,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23362384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homosociality/pseuds/specficslut
Summary: Once upon a time, Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr were in love. Then Sebastian Shaw stole Erik away, brainwashed him, and made him his own mate.Until, in the water, Charles Xavier encounters a mind he thought he'd never feel again.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/Sebastian Shaw
Series: the dark of your body [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1849696
Comments: 96
Kudos: 206





	1. Chapter 1

He was here.

He was alive, and he was _here._ The viola-strum of a mind he thought he’d never feel again. For a moment, Charles thought it was a trick—Sebastian Shaw, even more devious and depraved than he could have ever imagined, Sebastian Shaw who had prepared this special torture just for Charles—but one shuddering brush against that glimmering, beautiful mind shoved that thought away. The magnetic ley lines of the earth that he could see through those eyes were unmistakable, inimitable.

Erik was alive.

Charles lost precious moments to the staggering force of that realization. Beside him, the CIA agent—MacTaggart—was shouting at him, but he cast his telepathy over that dulcet, low-toned mental symphony, not intruding, just _feeling_ , relishing—and that was when he noticed the cracks.

Like someone had scrambled the notes of Erik’s mind, ripped the sheet music apart and sewn it back together in something haphazard and discordant, put the music back together in a way that was fundamentally _wrong_ but impenetrable from the outside. His mind was strangely slippery, though as the naval destroyer drew closer to Shaw’s pleasure yacht, Charles found himself gaining more purchase on the slick contours of Erik’s mind—which was strange, because aside from very basic matters of range, distance had never mattered much to his telepathy before. He took a shuddering breath and waded into Erik’s mind, the thoughts lapping at his feet like coming home, like slipping into something comfortable after a long day out, but there was a strange diamond sheen to them, unfamiliar, grating. _Erik?_ he cast out. _Erik? It’s me. Erik._

A low ripple of—fear, almost. _GET OUT OF MY HEAD_ , Erik came back in a shuddering torrent of bile and horror. Caught off-guard, Charles stumbled on the railing, MacTaggart catching his elbow and steadying him, but it was the purely mental which preoccupied Charles now. Erik’s shout was more noise than fury; if Charles had tripped over himself out of Erik’s mind at the shout, it was only because of the years he’d spent honoring his once-mate’s requests for mental privacy had made it instinct. But Erik had never responded to him like that before. Like he was a stranger.

For the first time, he considered what Erik might be doing on Shaw’s boat.

Trying to kill him, probably, Charles thought dully. Erik had never been satisfied with what Charles could do to the minds of the Nazis they’d hunted together. Erik liked blood and the visceral snap of bone; Charles preferred his work to be as bloodless as possible, and not only because a mysterious coma was much less likely to be traced to two strangers who’d turned up in town than a vicious murder scene. Had their disagreement over means driven him apart? But they’d been mates—Erik had bared his throat to him, a difficult victory on both their parts, a submission made all the sweeter for how hard they’d had to fight for it. They’d talked about differences in methodology with the playfulness of lovers debating their next sex game, not with any real vitriol. Surely Erik had to know that Charles would never have stood in the way of him killing Shaw, not when it came down to it, not when Charles knew what it meant to Erik.

Surely Erik wouldn’t have _left_ him. Found a way to disguise his mind, faked that bloodstained scarf on the bridge, let Charles think he was _dead_ , for _years_ —

—pushed Charles out of his mind with such violence that he stumbled—

His throat tight, Charles tightened his grip on MacTaggart’s arm. “Ram the boat,” he said, ignoring everything she’d said to him in the past minute or so.

“I— _what?”_

“She’s a big, strong ship, she can take it,” Charles said, and when MacTaggart continued to goggle at him, he reached into the mind of the captain and, swiftly and remorselessly, took control. _“Ram the boat.”_

The sailors at the controls exchanged looks, but thank God for military training; after only a few beats of hesitation they scrambled into position and prepared to take a run at the yacht. “Charles,” MacTaggart shouted at him, “what have you done—”

Shaw wasn’t getting away, not this time. Erik could have his revenge and then… and then. And then maybe he would return to Charles’s arms, where he _belonged_ , where he had ought to have been this whole time—had he thought Charles was holding him back? distracting him? hadn’t he known that Charles would have followed him _anywhere?—_ a great _whoosh_ of speed, Charles felt the sea-salt spray of the ocean in his hair, in his eyelashes, and then the ship ground into the smaller yacht with a mighty _crunch_ that boded ill for the intricate inner workings of belowdecks, but as Charles had suspected, the yacht came out much the worse for wear, while the destroyer was barely dented, though its paintjob was a wreck.

He put his fingers to his temple. “Again,” he said, his voice sounding very distant to his own ears.

“Charles, please stop!”

The destroyer reared backward and slowly, slowly, it began to chug forward toward Shaw’s boat again. Charles stared at the hole creaking open in its side and wondered where Erik was. Wood splintered—the hull of the boat creaked and moaned under the strain. Surely he would get to safety. Surely he would—

“Again!” he gritted out. The destroyer swallowed the water and hurled itself into the yacht with another long _creak_ reminiscent of bone about to snap. When the ship pulled back, he could see that the yacht was listing to one side now; the destroyer had punched a hole the size of a house into the yacht’s siding, metal twisted into some perverse sculpture, wood buckling under the strain, and water was pouring in now, a Titanic in miniature.

“Again,” he said—but then something happened to the metal.

As he watched, the broken metal reached for its own ragged edges and began to knit together again, the yacht healing itself over before their eyes. “What—” MacTaggart gasped, but Charles knew. There was only one person whose could do something so terrible and miraculous, and he was _there_ , on that boat, helping Shaw, putting the pieces of his ship back together—impossible, impossible. He reached out again with more determination to that trembling viola-string of a mind, seized on the purity of the note it was singing, and plunged into it, trying to decipher its motives. _Erik,_ he thought, and this time he rode the wave of revulsion and horror, let himself be open and receptive to it, and when it passed he was still clinging to the edges of Erik’s beautiful, expansive mind. _Erik, what’s happening? What do you want me to do?_

No answer.

Except two things happened at once: the front of the yacht _opened_ , and—Christ—a submarine struck out from the ruins of what had once been a very nice pleasure vehicle, and the mind he was tracking plunged into the icy water.

“No,” Charles said aloud, and MacTaggart was shaking him, demanding to know what was going on, but he shook her off and moved closer to the edge of the destroyer’s deck, checking again—but the mind he was immersed in was all ice water and breathless despair now, and that was unacceptable—”you’ll drown, Erik, no, what are you doing—”

He wasn’t using his power to try and stop the submarine, not that he would be able to—Erik had always struggled to control his powers, which Charles thought was a holdover from the traumatic circumstances under which they’d manifested themselves, practicing almost constantly, wending that coin over his fingers but still unable to master either the large, destructive movements that would make him truly a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield or the fine movements that might make him an excellent spy. And now he was just floating there, buffeted by the swells of water, lost, aching for something Charles couldn’t name—before he knew what he was doing, he had a knee up on the railing, was scrambling over—MacTaggart was shouting again, pulling at his arm, but he was stronger than her—and he fell. He tumbled into the icy waters of the Atlantic, his mind unerringly seeking its other half, the mind whose absence had ripped the wholeness of Charles’s soul into ragged, violent tatters. _Erik,_ he called out. _Erik._

He didn’t care that Erik had left him at that moment, didn’t care if Erik wanted nothing to do with him, he would leave if Erik told him to the moment he was dry and safe from the deathlike clutches of the ocean. But this was unbearable, the love of his life in the cold grip of the sea, as vast and endless and uncaring as it was of the precious things that floated within it. Charles swam like his life depended on it, because in a way it did, the eddies and ripples kicked up by the motion of the boats in the water swinging him wildly about but he gritted his teeth and shoved his body through the water with the fierce determination of someone who knew that anything but success was impossible, unthinkable.

A dark shape bobbed in the water before him, and he reached for it—

And the moment his skin brushed against that frozen, goosebumped skin, he _saw._

The shape of that viola string bent and broken. His beloved omega, so afraid, beaten and brainwashed until he believed that Shaw—Shaw, the monster he’d escaped so many years ago, the monster he’d dedicated his adult years to hunting, Shaw, who had been the shadow over his life until he met Charles those years ago, and even then had hung over their bed like a Sword of Damascus ready to cut their happiness at any time—that monster, that bastard, was his alpha, and not Charles, not Charles who loved him like an extension of himself, more dearly even, because if he had to give up an arm or a leg for Erik’s happiness he would have done it gladly. He couldn’t remember Charles. He didn’t even know who he was, this foreign presence that his mind welcomed so eagerly, and it must have frightened him, of course it had frightened him. Charles ached, felt like he was being flayed into little strips, this was worse than he’d ever imagined, how naive and young he had been when he’d thought that the worst thing that could happen to them was Erik’s death.

Shaw had tricked them, somehow. Stolen Erik for his own, claimed him, convinced him that all he remembered was pain and submission and not love, love like he deserved, love like Charles had sworn to deliver unto him for all his days. The facts came too quickly to Charles’s mind, more painful than the press of his fingers against Erik’s shoulder after all these years. Had taken him, raped him, made him his own. The creature struggling in Charles’s arms was not his omega but the ghost of his omega, after Shaw had killed everything in Erik that had once made him shine so brightly, sing to Charles’s senses, even his scent was muted in the water, even his mind chimed dully against Charles’s own.

“Alpha!” Erik was shouting. “Alpha, come back,” his attention on Shaw’s departure, only paying attention to the arms around him for how they were preventing him from being dragged underwater as he lashed himself magnetically to the submarine.

“He’s not your Alpha!” Charles shouted, tears spilling from his eyes. No. No. He couldn’t believe that. He’d believed Erik lost to him once, and he’d been wrong, catastrophically wrong, he should’ve spent every second searching for proof, searching for the body—he would not make the same mistake.

He tightened his grip on Erik, who writhed in his arms, shouted, “Let go of me!” His voice frantic, his hand reaching out for the departing submarine, trying to reel it in with his powers, but his fractured and fragmented mind would not hold the impulse, and in fits and jerks it sailed away from them, left them alone in the water save for the hundred minds milling around on the destroyer behind him, the lights sweeping over the water in search of where Charles had jumped.

“Calm your mind,” Charles pleaded, like he had so many times before, like he had whenever Erik had woken up screaming from a nightmare. He reached out, tried to soothe the discordant shrieking in Erik’s head, like tuning piano strings, but there was so much damage, so much scarring, he didn’t know what to do, how to keep from making it worse. “Calm your mind,” he half-sobbed, forced into speaking aloud, mourning the loss of the intimate contact they’d always shared, when they hadn’t needed to speak, even telepathically, to understand each other perfectly. “Please, Erik, I know it hurts. I know you’re scared. I’m here now, he doesn’t have you any more. You’re safe now, I promise. You’re all right.”

He wondered, vaguely, why Erik had jumped. If Shaw had forced him into the water. Or if, sensing Charles in his mind for the first time in three years, he’d unconsciously—unwillingly? the thought made him _ache_ —dove into the sea to get to the person his soul still recognized as his true alpha. After all these years. After all this time.

A fire lit in the pit of his stomach. He would get Erik back. And he would murder Sebastian Shaw for what he’d done to him. To them both. But first he had to Erik on board the ship. Had to make sure he was safe.

“Please,” Charles said. “Please, he’s gone. Please, let me help you. Let me get you dry and warm.”

In his arms, Erik trembled. God, he’d gotten so thin. He was drenched to the skin and wearing a silvery circlet of some kind, not a traditional collar but almost a crown, and Charles suspected that was how their telepathic connection had been broken through distance all those years ago. He met Charles’s eyes, then looked down, obviously conditioned into deference, but not before Charles caught a glimpse, of the first time in three years, of those gorgeous eyes, shading into gray from the reflected light of the water. “I need,” he whispered. “I need my Alpha.”

“You’re confused,” Charles said, agony stretching his voice thin. “You’ve been hurt. You need to get to safety. Please. Let me help you. I’ll take care of you,” he said, a repeated promise from years ago, when they’d first sworn love and loyalty to each other as alpha and omega. “Please, come with me. Erik. Erik. Please.”

Erik tilted his head when Charles said his name, and Charles realized it was probably the first time he’d heard it in Charles’s voice, shouting from the deck of the ship notwithstanding. “Erik,” he said, slightly encouraged. “Erik. Please.”

Slowly, Erik stopped struggling. And when Charles, still treading water, loosened his grip and extended his hand for Erik to take, he did; his grip still strong after all the torment he’d gone through, though new scars roped over his hands. And Charles felt, in the distance, the viola-string of Erik’s mind slip into harmony with his own; just for a moment, but a moment was enough.  
  
  
  
BEFORE

“Mm, I believe Mr. Reimann said he was staying in Nové Město, near Charles Square… like your name, Charles,” the pretty receptionist at the National Archives giggled. Charles beamed at her. He hadn’t even had to use his telepathy, which was slowly, over the course of his quest, getting stronger all the time; his usual line about the star pattern of freckles on her left cheek being a mutation had worked like a charm. “He’s a popular man, isn’t he, Mr. Reimann? A very prominent scholar in the field, I suppose.”

Chills prickled up the nap of Charles’s neck. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, just that you aren’t the only person to come looking for him,” the girl, whose nametag proclaimed her Tereza, told him. “A very nice, well-turned-out beta man asked after him earlier as well. He must be quite the academic, to be in such high demand. I don’t know very much about the conference being held here, though.”

Charles tapped his fingernails on her desk nervously. This was the first he’d heard about someone else being after Richard Reimann, a known associate of several Nazis who’d changed their names and gone off the grid after the end of World War II. Charles was after him because of the work he had done on behalf of one Klaus Schmidt, now Sebastian Shaw; they kept in contact regularly, the recruiter who had led Raven into the belly of the beast had blurted out after a thorough application of telepathic force. If Reimann could tell him how to get to Shaw, he could get her back. Convince her that she’d misunderstood their relationship, the break between them. Tell her—

“Is that all, Mr. Xavier?” Tereza said, a touch frostier now that he’d been ignoring her for a while. He smiled apologetically at her; it was true what they said, that girls could always tell when another woman was on a man’s mind, even if that woman was his wayward radical sister. He tipped his hat to her and hastened out the door, not sure if he was hoping to run into this man who was after Reimann as well or avoid him entirely. A police officer? Mossad? He was sure either wouldn’t enjoy an academic who’d been halfway through earning his PhD when his sister disappeared tagging along after them, but the leads to Shaw’s associates he might lift off of their minds… well. It was almost enough for him to salivate. 

It turned out, he thought numbly, as the _very nice, well-turned-out beta man_ withdrew his knife from Reimann’s throat and turned to where Charles was standing in the entrance of the alleyway onto which spilled the back entrance of Reimann’s hotel, he should have possibly been worried not about the difficulties in contacting Reimann in a jail cell but what might happen if the other man were an _assassin_ who was now turning his gray-green eyes on Charles. Fumblingly, he drew the gun the man who had agreed to take him to Prague had pressed onto him, despite his claims that he didn’t need it. “Don’t,” he said in halting Czech.

The man smirked. It was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?” he replied in fluent, if lightly accented, Czech. “Throw it at me?”

If he could bloody _focus_ , he could do a lot more than that, but Charles was finding that being suddenly confronted with a dead or dying body was a thoroughly rattling affair. “Let me take him to a hospital.”

“It’s a little late for that,” the man said languidly. Charles brandished his gun more threateningly. The man’s gaze followed the barrel of the gun—

—then, with a flick of his eyes, it sailed out of Charles’s hand—and floated into his own.

Charles stared, captivated, as he stripped out the magazine and the bullet in the chamber with practiced movement. He flinched at the clink of the golden bullet on the floor. “How did you do that?” he said breathlessly.

The man turned away and strode toward the other end of the alley. “Wait,” he said, and then, knowing it would echo differently in the man’s mind, he projected, _Wait._

The man froze. _That thing you did—_ Charles thought, _it’s not magic, is it? What I’m doing now, these thoughts in your mind—it’s not magic, either._

In a heartbeat, the man was in front of him, slamming him against the wall. Charles wriggled against his grip, which was firm and unyielding. “How did you do that?” he growled. “What are you?”

 _You can think it, I’ll hear you,_ Charles whispered into his mind, which felt like whispering music into the night air. God, but he smelled good for a beta, Charles couldn’t help but notice dazedly. It would probably be gauche of him to bury his nose into his clavicle and take a deep sniff, though. _And I think—I think I’m like you, my friend._

 _I am_ not _your friend,_ the man thought back, fierce in tone but tentative in nature, like he wasn’t sure, in spite of Charles’s reassurances, that this trick could go both ways. 

_You could be. You were hunting him, weren’t you? Richard Reimann._ The fist at his lapel tightened. That mind trembled against his, vibrating like a plucked viola string, and Charles felt almost drugged by the musicality of it, the way the name of the Nazi struck a discordant note that brought forth images of bodies, so _many_ bodies, men that had lost their lives at this man’s hand, all tied to the Third Reich, all of whom had escaped justice at the hands of Nuremberg and Jerusalem. _You hunt men like him,_ Charles thought, certain now of his determination, and of his next step. _Evil men. A man like him took my sister. I was looking for Reimann because he created his cover identity. You killed my lead—but you can help me._

 _And why would I help you?_ the man thought, tilting his head. It was probably supposed to sound derisive. If it had been spoken, it would have sounded derisive. But Charles could sense the genuine curiosity behind the question, and he smiled.

 _Because you thought you were alone,_ Charles murmured, as intimate as he was with his lovers—more, the surge of discovering another adult mutant, someone else _like him_ and Raven, was a thousand times more powerful than being struck by lightning, a hundred thousand times more earth-shaking than falling in love. _And now you’re not. And you never have to be again. Erik,_ he sighed into the man’s mind, _you’re not alone. You’re not alone, Erik._

And the fist in his shirt tightened, then relaxed, and though the man’s face remained impassive, Charles could _feel_ the wonder spreading through his mind, the soft tones of surprise and gratitude and something very similar to what Charles was feeling rising and mingling with that viola-strum of pure, concentrated will. Erik Lehnsherr’s hands drifted down Charles’s shirtfront—he still dressed like a student, Raven used to chastise him, even though he was closer to being a professor—smoothing the wrinkles, straightening his shirt collar, and Charles beamed at him. That was a yes. He was _very_ good at getting people to do what he wanted, and that was a yes.

“All right,” Erik said aloud, taking a step back and smoothing his own clothes fastidiously, as though Charles’s scruffiness might have rubbed off on him. “You’ve convinced me. So who is this man you want to kill?”

“Find,” Charles corrected. Though he did hate Sebastian Shaw with every filament of his being, more than that, he just wanted Raven _back,_ and if he could only find her, he knew that he could convince her… one way or another. “His name is Sebastian Shaw.”

Only moments into their first meeting, Charles was treated to the unique pleasure of Erik Lehnsherr stunned speechless. He had a feeling, even then, that it was not a sight that occurred often. His jaw worked up and down and he leveled Charles with a look so fierce, a glare that resonated so intently with the viola string inside his head, that Charles thought for a breathless, mindless moment that it was _he_ who could read minds, clearly, and Charles who was his hapless subject. “Well,” he said with a short bark of laughter. “It seems we have even more in common than previously thought.”

Charles could feel the beginning fibers of resistance beginning to twine around Erik’s soul. _I work alone_ and _Shaw is mine_ , that kind of nonsense. “I can help you,” he said hastily. “My ability—it’s useful in gathering information. When my informants aren’t dead, of course.”

“No doubt,” Erik said, slow consideration in his voice, but his mind had perked up at the suggestion and was whirling away thinking of practical applications for someone who could read minds—and he didn’t even know about the mind control yet, Charles thought giddily. “Given the amount of information a doe-eyed Oxford graduate student would need to track Shaw this far, you’ve certainly proven that you can hold your own… for an amateur.”

“How did you know—”

“The way you pronounce certain words,” Erik told him. “And you’re too old to be an undergraduate and too young to be a professor.” Charles floundered briefly—it was hardly as though Erik was _incorrect,_ but he was used to being the one who impressed his marks with parlor tricks like ordering their favorite drinks. “Fine. I’ll take you along on my hunt. Luckily for you, I got the information we needed about Shaw out of Reimann before I killed him. But you’ll do what I say, without question.”

“You’ll find that _without question_ isn’t really my style,” Charles said, grinning. Erik didn’t smile back, but there was a certain lightness around his eyes—and a certain resigned humor in his mind—that told Charles he was thinking about it.

“So I see already,” he said, and pulled him out of the alleyway toward the hotel, whose lights were flickering dimly in the wet gloaming. Charles leaned dizzily into his grasp, halfway in love already… even if it was with a male beta.  
  
  
  
Erik’s hotel room—he’d taken the room next door to their mark—was a revelation. Tacked up on the wall were the meticulous notes and maps and photographs and newspaper clippings and twine-tacked connections of either a madman or a seasoned Nazi hunter. Charles paused at the sketch positioned at the center. The man had a mustache and was wearing Nazi regalia, but it was undoubtedly the man he had seen in the mind’s eye of the recruiter who had taken Raven away from him: Sebastian Shaw. Upon closer reflection, it seemed as though every scrap of information there pertained to Shaw; Charles scrutinized the background of what appeared to be Paris, a love shot of a couple kissing at a park with the Eiffel Tower rising in the background, and there, in the shadow of a tree, meeting Reimann, was Shaw.

“You know my name, but you haven’t told me your own yet,” Erik said. He had stripped down to his shirt and suspenders. Charles was trying not to stare too avidly at his lean lines stretched thinly over a tall, elegant frame. He was queer enough to fuck a male beta, but he didn’t want to alienate the man who might be his best lead for finding Raven in case Erik wasn’t. He hadn’t sensed any desire for him, after all… and Charles knew he wasn’t exactly the most stereotypical alpha, but he had faith in his sparkling personality and ability to win anyone ever, even the grumpiest of Nazi hunters.

“Charles Xavier.”

“Well. For politeness’s sake, I’m Erik Lehnsherr, though I’m guessing you already knew that.”

Charles smiled at him—he was going for coy, but Erik snorted, which made him think that he’d overshot the mark—and tapped a finger on his lips. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Lehnsherr.”

“What can you do with that, anyway?” Erik asked, a hint of curiosity underlying his gruffness. (Charles was _very_ good at reading reluctant positive emotions when it came to himself.) “Your—” he wiggled his fingers by his head. Charles tried not to laugh.

“I call it telepathy,” he said.

“Like the psychic secret societies,” Erik said dubiously.

“No—well, that’s where _most_ of the usage of that word has come from, yes, but… I’m a man of science. Studying genetics. I think that’s where it comes from, you know, our powers… the genetic code. You were right, I was getting my PhD, when…”

Erik softened—imperceptibly unless you were pressed against his mind as Charles was, hearing that pure note of intense interest mellow and deepen into empathy. “You lost someone.”

Charles nodded jerkily. He looked at the connections Erik had drawn with twine between the photographs and news clippings and sketches and letters tacked up on his hotel wall. “I can hear people’s thoughts when I concentrate. If I try hard enough, I can… influence them.” He felt Erik’s attention sharpen on him like a knife against a whetstone and he fidgeted and tried to look as harmless as possible. Now was the time to go carefully, lest he end up like Reimann; he thought, rather, that this was not a man who would enjoy being influenced. “I can’t do it all the time…”

“How do I know you’re not influencing me right now?” Erik said curiously, his voice deceptively mild when Charles knew he was aware of every metal fixture in the room (he could sense it as well as control it, how _fascinating_ ) and was prepared to slit his throat in an instant—and Charles wasn’t sure if he could act quickly enough to stop him if he decided to kill him.

Charles shrugged helplessly. “You don’t.”

Erik stared at him for a moment, and Charles was tense, his fingers ready to fly to his forehead if he had to stop Erik—not that he thought it would do much good, he was sure that Erik’s reflexes were better than his own, perhaps it hadn’t been the best idea following him into his hotel room?—but he felt Erik relax even before he saw it, the tense note of his mind loosening into something almost like amusement. “That’s a powerful thing you can do,” he said. “You could be a prince, if you wanted. A Head of State.”

Charles made a face. “Politics is so… messy. Give me a laboratory any day.”

This seemed to amuse Erik particularly. “You’re a rare breed, Xavier.”

“So they tell me in my genetics courses,” Charles joked, and he was rewarded with something almost approaching a smile. Hesitantly, he said, “You’re taking it well, you know. When I first started to be able to… control people… my sister, she barred me from her mind entirely.”

“You can hardly blame her,” Erik said calmly. He disappeared into the en-suite bathroom. “I’m confident in my self-knowledge… and my ability to kill you if I suspect myself of acting out of character.”

Charles hesitated before he spoke again, sure that what he was going to ask would rub against a sore spot. “All the notes on your wall… they’re all about Sebastian Shaw.”

Erik stepped back into the room, rubbing a towel over his hands. Cleaning off the blood, Charles realized with a start. His face was inscrutable again, and his mind equally dark and stormy. “Like I said,” he said, “we have more in common than previously suspected. You want to get Shaw; so do I.”

“ _Find_ him,” Charles corrected.

“You can find him, if you like,” Erik said flatly. “I’m going to kill him.”

Charles thought he should protest, but Erik spoke with such finality—and really, if anyone deserved it, it was predators who lured young girls to his side because of their powers—he bit his lip and said, hesitantly, suspecting that the answer would unlock the puzzle box that was Erik Lehnsherr to his gaze, “Why do you want to kill him so badly?” 

“Can’t you read my mind?” Erik asked lightly.

“No,” Charles said honestly. “If you’re not actively thinking about it, it… takes a lot more effort on my part to uncover a memory that you’ve buried. Maybe someday, but… I’m not that strong enough yet.”

“Let’s play a game,” Erik said. “Find out why I want to kill him— _without_ using your telepathy.”

“And what do I get if I win?” Charles teased.

Erik met his gaze steadily. “I’ll think of something,” he said, low and warm in a way that made Charles blush all the way down to his toes.  
  
  
  
Eventually, Charles returned to his own hotel to pack, and they agreed to meet at the train station to catch the train into East Germany, where Reimann had blurted out the headquarters of the set of forgers he worked for was located. Charles walked him feeling light-headed, like he could step into the air and float away at any moment; someone else like him, someone who proved his theories about mutation, someone else who was proof that he wasn’t alone in the world. Raven he might have almost made up, a childhood dream. But Erik was real and present and _here_ , and Charles—and Charles—  
  
  
  
As they settled into their train compartment—shabby, Charles noticed, shabbier than he was used to on the western side of the Iron Curtain—a snack trolley was coming around. It sold more than just snacks, Charles registered with vague surprise—he wasn’t particularly well-traveled, he was coming to realize, though he’d grown up transatlantically, he’d never been very far out of either Westchester or Oxford, with his mother and stepfather preferring to leave him and Raven behind on their vacations if at all possible—but small collapsible umbrellas, newspapers, hats and sunglasses; anything you might see on a New York streetside cart.

Travel chess sets, he noticed. He flagged the lady down and secured biscuits for the both of them; Erik pursed his lips but accepted his own with something approximating graciousness. “Do you play?” he asked, more for politeness’s sake than any other reason, but froze when the strum of Erik’s interest increased to a fever pitch.

“Not for a long time,” Erik said, almost demurely, as though he could fool Charles. Charles grinned and handed over a fistful of koruna—too many, if the wry, amused mouth of the woman said anything about it. “No,” Erik said sharply, and took the money back. She scowled at him; he scowled back at her.

“You just make friends everywhere you go, don’t you?” Charles said with a grin.

“Those are horrifically overpriced,” Erik grumbled. “If you want to play, get a set at the next station.”

“What do you care if they’re overpriced?” Charles asked curiously. “Nazi-hunting must be a lucrative profession. All that stolen gold…”

Erik’s expression contorted. “I don’t _keep_ the money, Xavier, for god’s sake. There are plenty of nice historians who are willing to work with me to make sure those stolen gold and valuables find their way into the descendants of those they were stolen from, or the closest approximation.”

“So how do you make a living?” Charles asked. Erik glanced out the window, but Charles caught a glimpse of what he was thinking of before he broke eye contact: using his powers to break the link of a woman’s gold necklace, a pawnshop, appearances being more important than substance—his impeccable suits hiding the fact that he slept and shaved in a rathole that morning. His slim frame, his well-turned-out-ness hiding a multitude of sins, including hunger. Charles bit his lip, wanting, for some strange, insane reason, to tell Erik about his fortune, to reassure he would never have to go hungry again because he’d had to make a choice between paying a bribe and dinner. Instead, he resolved to pay for the hotels this time when they stopped and said, “Let’s try this,” he said, and put his fingers to his temple, projecting the image of a chessboard.

Erik did a double-take, staring at what, to anyone looking in on their compartment from the outside, looked like the bare surface of the table between them. “How did you—”

“It’s not real,” Charles said. “I’m projecting an image into your mind. But you can move the pieces.” Erik picked up the white queen, rolled it between his fingers, marveling.

“It _feels_ real,” he said, hushed.

“I’m tricking your fingers into thinking it’s made of wood,” Charles smiled. “Nice-quality wood, too. The best kind of game; the train won’t jar the pieces.”

Erik smiled—a real smile, and oh, didn’t that just make Charles’s heart jar uncomfortably in his chest—and picked up a pawn of each color. He held his closed fists out to Charles. “You choose,” he said.

“You know that I decide which color is which,” Charles told him.

“White, then,” Erik decided, and with a blink Charles rearranged the board. “Your move.”

No one looked in on them all that afternoon, but if they had, it must have been strange; two men laughing over nothing, moving invisible pieces through the air, and starting another game when that one was over. Charles lost more often than he won, struck by the green-blue glint of Erik’s eyes in the morning light, at times fumbling and forgetting that it was his turn entirely. Erik’s smile, his real smile, verged on the nearly-shy; and as the second hour shaded into the third, the chess fell to the side, each of them taking longer to discuss where they’d learned to play and what passed for strategy in Oxford than thinking about their moves, the pauses for conversation growing longer and longer between moves as they ranged from literature to science to chess tactics. Erik, Charles was delighted to find, was well-read, well-traveled, and an utterly ruthless thinker, who listened with the same avidity to how the field of genetics had progressed since the days of Mendel as he did when picking apart Charles’s play style for weaknesses.

It was strange, Charles thought. Raven had been drifting from him for so long, he hadn’t actually realized how alone he’d felt at Oxford, surrounded by people, a different beta in his bed each night, until on this madcap trip to recover the only person he’d thought had ever really understood him, he’d found someone who _actually_ understood him. Friendship, he thought, fraternity, except—except those words seemed too small to encompass the way Erik looked at him and, even without telepathy, _understood_ him, the whole depth of who Charles was and had been and could be swallowed up in those changeable eyes. They had the kind of breathless intimacy with each other that Charles associated with romantic notions of love at first sight. The kind of intimacy that beckoned to closed mouths, that persuaded them that anything could be shared, anything understood.

They talked as they wandered off the train, and secured a hotel room together (Charles surreptitiously paying with a traveler’s check before Erik could reach for the wad of cash sewn into the bottom of his briefcase), as they slipped into beds on the opposite sides of the room. It was like they would never have enough to say to each other. Charles suspected, that first night, that they drifted off to sleep still talking, still soaking up the presence of the other man’s mind in their own way. He thought it might have been his mother that he was talking about when he finally nodded off, but he couldn’t be sure if that was a dream or not—or if they had continued talking, even in dreams, Charles’s telepathy pulling Erik into his mind long after they’d both closed their eyes and their breathing had steadied in the world of their bodies.  
  
  
  
In Dresden, Erik grinned madly as he walked unarmed into a room full of Nazi-funded forgers and killed them all with their own knives and guns.

In Hamburg, they got a lead about an arms smuggler Shaw might have been in contact with. A gangly teenager tried to mug Charles; “I could have handled him,” Charles protested when Erik rescued him.

“You froze,” Erik said bluntly. “We’ll have to teach you how to use your powers even when you’re panicking.”

In Bergen, they did just that. Repetitions in which Charles slipped into Erik’s sonata of a mind and froze him, ten or twelve times in a row, until Charles’s head was pounding and Erik’s head was pounding but he was still grinning like a maniac because Charles had done it, he’d done it, and Charles said nothing about how the only other person who’d ever known hadn’t celebrated his growing powers but feared them out of concern that Erik might do the same.

In Reykjavik, Charles walked into a used bookshop and found Erik an English copy of _On the Road_ , so that Erik would get the references he made to Dean and Sal and the bleakness of their journey, and watched as Erik unwrapped it with a childlike light in his eyes that made something inside of Charles curl up and cry.

In Oslo, they rang in 1958 and Charles took a pouty blonde omega to bed. Erik didn’t talk to him for all the next day, which was one of those little things that gave him hope about his chances with Erik, but which were so outweighed by the things that didn’t and his own desire not to lose the most important friendship he’d ever had that he never pressed it, never asked.

In Turin, Charles began teaching Erik how to build telepathic blocks of his own—not that he was any good at it, Charles liked to tease him.

In Rome, Charles killed a man for the first time, and the less said about that, the better. (But he would have killed Erik. Erik had been slumped on the dirty ground of an alley, unconscious, and Charles had reached for his telepathy but it hadn’t been where he’d needed it to be and he’d panicked, and Erik was always telling him how useless he was when he panicked, and the next thing he knew he’d picked up the knife the way Erik had taught him to hold it and—)

In Rome, Erik climbed into the shower next to him and held him as the water ran cold.  
  
  
  
In Genoa, Charles told Erik:

“She wasn’t really my sister. When I was eight, I came downstairs in the middle of the night with a baseball bat and found her disguised as my mother, stealing food from the pantry. I frightened her, I think. I spoke in her mind. And then—like magic—she was a little girl. A little girl with blue scales and yellow eyes who could become whatever she wanted to be.”

“Not magic,” Erik told him gently. “You said so the first time we met. It wasn’t magic.”

“It was _beautiful,”_ Charles sighed. “The physics alone—it should be impossible, you know, for someone with that little mass to disguise herself as an adult, but it wasn’t—”

“Did you tell her that?” Erik asked, amused.

“Of course not. I didn’t want to scare her off.”

“Of course not.”

“I made my mother think… that she’d adopted her.” Erik raised an eyebrow, impressed. “It came easier when I was young. And then there were a few years when I tried not to use my powers at all, and they fell… out of practice. But. In all the ways that mattered, she was my sister. When our mother died, I took her to Oxford with me, and things just… fell apart. I don’t know. She would ask me questions, like why we had to hide, and I would never have answers for her… and eventually she started finding answers from someone else.”

“Sebastian Shaw.”

“I don’t know what he promised her,” Charles said hoarsely. “I don’t know if she’s even still alive. But I have to find him. Find him, and stop him from… from doing to any other families what he did to mine.” And that made Erik’s expression crumple, for the briefest of moments, but he still didn’t say what his own reasons for hunting Shaw were, even though Charles had left him the perfect opening, even though they’d grown as close as twinned blades in the sheath. He wanted to win, Charles thought with some amusement. He could hardly blame Erik. Erik, too, made him want to win like he’d never wanted anything before—win their little bets, win their little games, win _Erik_ , no matter how impossible or silly a prize like that might have seemed.  
  
  
  
In St. Petersburg, they picked up the trail of an associate of Shaw’s in his Nazi days, Peter Wickler, and ran him down across the length and breadth of the Soviet Union.

In Krasnoyarsk, the heat went out and they huddled together, finding every scrap of cloth in their little Siberian huddle and piling them up on the bed, Peter Wickler’s corpse splayed on the ground at the foot of the bed. Erik breathed life into a little fire made of newspaper scraps on the floor, a skill he promised to teach Charles the moment they weren’t so blasted cold and their lives depended on it, and then they piled into the bed together. Charles breathed in Erik’s scent, a faint hint of spicery unusual for a beta, and wondered if that scent was the reason he’d follow Erik anywhere, like, he acknowledged to himself now, an naive fool in love.

“Tell me a story,” Charles breathed into Erik’s ear.

Erik sighed, put-upon, but murmured obligingly, “There was once a man named Dean, and he was an optimistic fool… and he met a man named Sal, who had seen the vagaries and disappointments of life and grown depressed by them… and the two of them embarked on a trip together…”

And they stayed awake like that until dawn broke and their contact came to check on them, trading stories, warmed by each other’s breath and the heat of their disagreements about the true thematic message of _On the Road_ until safety arrived for them.  
  
  
  
The spires of Bruges, the castles of Munich, a vineyard nestled in the Alps where Erik drove a blade in-between the ribs of an assassin who had been hired by a Nazi banker to find and kill whoever was tracking the movement of his assets around the globe. A quick trip down to Istanbul, where Charles wandered through the Grand Bazaar wondering if Erik would be offended if he got him one of the rings traditionally given to omegas, and Erik sweated through his _jubba_. They sipped tea in the Turkish style and Charles watched avidly as people passed their doorway, covered only with a curtain of beads, the bustle and rumble of everyday life in a city like he’d never seen before.

It seemed that Erik was always showing him new parts of the world. He wondered if he’d done the same for Erik, with the way he encouraged him to stop and appreciate the way the world was beautiful as well as ugly; the pregnant omega in the park whispering endearments to her two-year-old, the flowers that seemed to follow like springtime in their wake wherever they went.  
  
  
  
In Paris—  
  
  
  
In Paris he shot a woman, point-blank. He concealed the gun in his coat and walked up to her on the street and shot her in the back and kept walking as she faltered and fell. Erik had told him about the camps, what this woman had done to him in the camps, and he could have taken the information about Shaw from her mind, the letter he sent her about the _new species_ and the _coming war_ and needing _able assistants_ and erased himself and Erik and the letter and Shaw entirely—he’d gotten better, gotten stronger, under Erik’s tutelage (sometimes he wondered where Erik had learned these techniques for strengthening mutations). But instead he had wanted her to suffer. He didn’t know if he killed her; the moment he’d pulled the trigger he’d been struck by a nausea so powerful that the only thing that could drown it was a hearty drink. He didn’t meet up with Erik as planned. Instead, he went to a pub and drank, and drank, and wondered what he was becoming, whether this was Raven’s fault or Erik’s or just something that had been growing in him all along, a path that he’d started down the moment he’d left Oxford. When he stumbled into their hotel room, he was well and truly sozzled, giggling to himself about how utterly unlike each other Erik and Raven were, how the phases of his life had been defined by them nevertheless, about the stories he’d have to tell if he ever went back to Oxford, which he had been unable to imagine without Raven by his side and now, Erik.

He wondered what Erik would be like in peacetime. If he would curl up by the fire and read books and discuss them with Charles, play chess games with him long into the night. If he would smile more, that shy, gorgeous smile that was a thousand times more captivating than the seductive smirk he wore to charm information out of targets. If he would kiss like he fought, or if he would let Charles take the lead, defer to his alpha instincts, let Charles lay him out on the bed and—

“Where the hell have you been?” Erik snapped and his giggling cut off abruptly. “Do you have any idea what I thought when you didn’t check in? What I’ve seen that woman do to people not even a fraction as naive and incompetent as you—?!”

“Erik,” Charles slurred, “shut the fuck up,” and he lunged forward and put his hands on Erik’s face and—checked in, just for a moment, calculated how likely it was that he’d be punched in the face by a straight beta, but Erik had frozen and was staring at his lips, which Charles knew were smeared red with drink-luster, and so Charles tilted his head up and kissed him.

And it was—  
  
  
  
When he’d been a child, he’d fallen out of a tree. Well. Raven had slipped as she was climbing above him and stepped on his arm and he’d let go out of pain and shock, but he remembered the falling, and he remembered the almighty _oof_ as he hit the ground, and he remembered the split second of shocked weightlessness before reality pushed in on him, when he forgot to be terrified, and kissing Erik was like that, Erik’s breath in his lungs, his shocked, still mouth against Charles’s as he waited for him to kiss back or push him away, and slowly Erik began to move against him and Charles flicked his tongue against his closed lips, just tasting, just teasing, and Erik let out a shocked moan—  
  
  
  
—and then he pushed him away so violently that Charles, whose balance was already not the best, stumbled backwards, tripped over his own feet, and landed on the bed. It would have been hot if not for Erik’s wild expression, the way he searched Charles’s face for—something, and only relaxed upon not finding whatever it was.

“You’re drunk,” he said brusquely, but in his mind, as clear as speech, Charles heard _We can’t._

“Why can’t we?” he asked plaintively. “You want me. I wasn’t sure, but you kissed back. I—I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I have as much to lose as you do.”

“Shut up,” Erik snarled, “just _shut up_ , for once in your life will you _shut up_.”

He turned on his heel and stormed into the en suite bathroom. The sound of the door locking made Charles’s head thump back on his pillow with its finality. “Excellent,” he muttered to himself. “Very clever. A bang-up job.”  
  
  
  
In Strasbourg, he found out why Erik had pushed him away.

Not immediately. What they found out immediately was that their last informant had warned their targets and that they were walking directly into a trap. It was quick and relatively non-violent; an unscheduled parade shoved their way in between Charles and Erik, and when Charles had managed to elbow his way through the masses of people waving banners, something about the Thirty Years’ War, to where he’d last seen Erik, Erik had already been gone, only the faint scent of chloroform lingering in the air in the alleyway he’d ducked into. Charles punched a brick wall hard enough that his knuckles came away bloody. Whoever had taken Erik had known that only unconsciousness would save them; that neither strength in numbers, nor superior weaponry, had been enough to save their comrades from Erik’s wrath.

It was the first time Charles had had to track someone through a city without Erik, and it was nerve-rattling and exhilarating in equal measure. He used his powers liberally, enough so that he had a pounding headache within the hour, combing the minds around him for suspicious behavior, visiting the chemical supply stores and finding out that a man with a German accent had purchased a bottle of chloroform the week before. They’d known they were coming, they’d known it had been _Erik_ coming for them. They’d been betrayed, though when their informant had been a Nazi sympathizer and was now a known smuggler of antiquities throughout Europe, was it really a betrayal or more something they should have seen coming? Charles understood better why Erik insisted that they could never trust anyone. “Except each other,” Charles would chime in, and Erik would say nothing but smile that tight but irrepressible smile he wore around Charles sometimes.

As the hours and then days passed with no Erik, he had to consider that they’d found a way to dampen his powers, or that he might be—but no. If he were dead already, they’d have killed him in the alley as soon as they’d rendered him unconscious and made it look like a simple mugging gone wrong. More likely they were looking for information. How far Erik had gotten on his quest for Shaw. Who was helping him. If anyone would come looking for him.

A place with no metal, a place where Erik would be just another man—

Charles found him three days later in the concrete bunker that the European Parliament was meant to retreat to in case of a nuclear attack by the Soviets. It hurt; he knew that Erik would have found him within the day, if not within the hour, but in spite of his powers he wasn’t a _hunter_ like Erik was, not yet—he crept downstairs into the bunker, headache dampened with aspirin and powers ready to lash out and gun in hand failing that, heard the _smack_ of fists impacting flesh and raised the gun a little higher, incensed, part of him straining to calm himself down, something like Erik’s voice telling him that he made mistakes when he was angry, that his powers didn’t work as well when he was furious.

“Little Erik,” taunted a voice. Not what Charles had expected a Nazi to sound like—this man’s accent was almost French. Alsatian. The Nazis had come from all over, he remembered. “I would have thought that once you’d been lucky enough to escape, you’d have the sense not to come crawling back for more. Klaus always spoke so highly of your brains.”

Erik spat at him. “Fuck you. Where is he?”

“I’m asking the questions, you little shit.” Another hit; a pained cry ripped itself from Erik’s throat this time, as though he’d landed a hit on an existing injury. “Matisse said that you were with someone, a little alpha. Who is he? Where is he?”

“You should have taken us both if you wanted to know that,” Erik coughed. And then he gasped. Charles could tell the moment he registered the metal that Charles had on him. A gentle tug to the gun Charles was grasping, and Charles let it go, let Erik maneuver it into the room. “And you really should have wanted to know that.”

“What the—”

A loud _bang._ Erik’s harsh breathing echoed through the air, then he called out, “I can’t get out of this rope myself.”

Charles stormed into the room, knife already out, and then he scented it. _Omega._

It was mixed with the stale stench of the dead beta on the ground between them, but it was unmistakable, the hints of spice in Erik’s regular scent brought out and allowed to flourish, sandalwood and cardamom and something intoxicatingly sweet that made his mouth water. Erik met his eyes steadily, and Charles could tell that he knew what Charles knew. There was something terribly resigned in his eyes, something that Charles would have wanted to wipe away even long before he knew that Erik was—what? How had he hidden that luscious scent for so long?

Erik rattled his wrists where they’d been tied above him. Mottled bruises speckled his thin chest and face, and the movement dragged Charles back to reality. He used the knife to sever the knots pulling his arms above his head, though he couldn’t resist running a finger around Erik’s wrist, soothing the inflamed skin where he’d rubbed it against the rope, savoring the smoothness of Erik’s skin.

Erik scowled at him when he let his arms down, rubbing at his wrists himself. Charles stripped the clothes off the dead body and draped them over Erik’s shaking shoulders; he was in just a scruffy pair of trousers, and his lips were faintly blue from cold. “Turn around,” he snapped as he fumbled for the shirt.

“Erik, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before—”

 _“Turn around,”_ Erik snarled, and Charles turned around, because omega or not, Erik was still the most dangerous person he knew, and he knew a lot of Nazis after their little jaunts across Europe.

It was after midnight, so no one was there to see Erik limp across half the city back to the hotel, his arm resting begrudgingly over Charles’s shoulders so that he could support him. Charles tried to breathe through his mouth as much as possible to mitigate the desire to stick his nose in the curve of Erik’s neck and scent him, just bury himself in that warm, spicy scent and that viola-strum of a mind; even if he couldn’t fuck Erik, he _desired_ him, _wanted_ him to be around with a fierceness that startled him for how he had never felt anything like it before, not even for Raven, who he loved like a sibling and wanted space from like a sibling all at once. He wanted more, of course, but just Erik’s presence was such a balm, such a tonic for the gaping cavity of loneliness in Charles’s chest that he’d never known the existence of before Erik.

They made it to the hotel room that Charles had rented out without speaking, beyond the soft grunts Erik made when he had no choice but to put weight on his right foot. Charles bustled around, pulled out their first aid kit, slapped Erik’s hand away when he reached for the scotch and the needle. “You’ve stopped bleeding,” he said, as professionally as possible with Erik’s scent lying in the air between them like the fruit of Tantalus. “Let me see your foot first.”

“Charles, do you even know the difference between a sprain and a break?” Erik asked exasperatedly, and it was the most _Erik-_ like thing he’d said since Charles had recovered him, and it made his shoulders loosen and a grin flash briefly over his face.

“I do now, thanks to you,” he said. “And you are _not_ sewing yourself up, I don’t care how fine your control is.”

“Your hands will shake,” Erik said mildly.

“No, they won’t,” Charles said brusquely. He knelt down between Erik’s legs and gently began palpating the ankle. Erik hissed, but though it was badly swollen and he certainly should not have been walking on it at all—Charles sighed when he thought about the fights he’d just signed himself up for to make sure Erik stayed off his feet until his ankle was healed—it didn’t seem broken. He moved up to Erik’s ribs next, and though they bloomed with bruises, his tormentor had been, Erik sniffed, incompetent—his ribs weren’t even cracked. Finally, Charles turned him around where he was bleeding through his borrowed shirt and inspected the wounds on his back, where he’d been beaten with something like a belt, new scars laying over old ones like a terrible kind of lacework.

He dabbed gently at the nastiest of the cuts with gauze soaked in scotch. Erik didn’t hiss, just dug his fingers into his knees and went blank, expressionless in a way that Charles hated, because his mind also dimmed at those times into something so low and quiet Charles could barely hear him.

Somehow, it was easier like this to say, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Erik snorted. “You seriously can’t figure it out?”

Charles bit his lip angrily, but his fingers stayed cool and gentle on Erik’s back. “No! It’s not like I would’ve treated you any different—respected you any less—”

“Wouldn’t you?” Erik said dryly.

“Of course not! Some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known have been omegas.”

“And you gathered this information while between their legs, I’m sure.”

Charles scowled, wishing that Erik was wrong. But it was true—he _had_ slept with most of the omegas at Oxford, not that it was very difficult, given that there were only eight of them. “How did you even dampen your scent, anyway? I didn’t know that was even possible.”

Erik shifted. “There’s a company on the other side of the Iron Curtain… they’ve been experimenting with a formula that allows omegas to delay their heats.”

“Heat suppressants?” Charles gasped. He’d heard _horror stories_ at university, of course, those omegas desperate enough not to go through a heat—to trick an abusive alpha into thinking they were infertile and thus gain grounds for divorce, or to prove to employers or universities that they weren’t liabilities, or to disguise themselves as betas, as Erik had—most known heat suppressants did their work by _slowly poisoning the body_ and forcing the immune system into overdrive to compensate. Arsenic was a known heat suppressant. So was mercury. “Those are dangerous, Erik!” 

“What’s _dangerous_ ,” Erik sneered, “is doing the work I do while presenting as an omega. Before I started taking the heat suppressants do you—do you have any idea what I had to do to get the information I needed? How many times the only way someone would give me anything, any scrap of information at all, is if I spread my legs for them? Do you have any idea how lucky I was, that that neanderthal beta who had me today didn’t think of the best way to hurt me? People take me seriously as a beta, and to be able to do this work—to be able to hunt these men—it’s worth it. Even if it takes a few years off my life.”

“No,” Charles said, running his fingers over the neat line of small, precise stitches he’d worked into Erik’s skin. “It’s not.”

Erik rolled his shoulders and stood abruptly, rifling through his luggage for a change of clothes. He pulled on a nicely-fitted shirt and trousers with harsh, jerky movements that Charles recognized from the only other times he’d gotten Erik well and truly furious with him. “Where are you going?” he asked, hating the note of plaintiveness in his voice.

“To get a separate room,” Erik said briskly. “I’ve been off the suppressants for two days, and my heat is coming. You’re not invited.”

“Erik—”

But the door banged shut with a terrible finality. Charles sighed at the scattered medical supplies around the room and finished, “You really shouldn’t be walking on that ankle,” to the open scotch bottle and the discarded piles of gauze and empty air.  
  
  
  
He guarded Erik’s room during his heat _not_ because he thought of Erik as his own or because he was concerned about a rogue alpha barging in and taking advantage of him, and certainly not because he was enough of a desperate lecher to press his ear against the door and savor Erik’s panting breaths and cut-off moans. He guarded Erik’s room because he wasn’t sure if, even though Charles had all their luggage and money, Erik would leave without him, decide it was worth abandoning years of research and every resource he had in the world to be rid of the alpha who knew his secret. He was well capable of starting over with nothing but the clothes on his back, Charles knew. And he was well capable of just—disappearing.

Charles thought of a world in which he never saw Erik again, and it was untenable, unacceptable. So he guarded the door and thought of nothing at all, certainly not Erik’s sweat-slick skin slipping between the sheets, certainly not that maddening, desperate scent drifting through the slit under the door just to drive him insane.  
  
  
  
“You’re still here,” Erik said, a note of surprise in his voice when he opened the hotel room door four days after having retreated in there to slake his lust.

“Of course,” Charles sniffed, running a bleary hand through his hair and yawning mightily from where he was slumped against the railing across from Erik’s door. “Let me look at your stitches. I think it’s time to take them out.”  
  
  
  
After that, things were… tense, though not in the way Charles wanted them to be tense. Erik would look at him with pure calculation in his eyes, like he was waiting for Charles to declare that Nazi-hunting was too dangerous for a dainty little omega like himself, but in truth Charles had been wanting to protect him for a long time, all of his instincts had centered around Erik long ago. He made faces when Erik met his eyes and took his heat suppressants at breakfast in front of him, instead of in the bathroom like he’d been doing before, but Erik ignored him, and Charles said nothing, and they both pretended that an argument the size of Mt. Vesuvius wasn’t brewing between them. So all in all, it was easy for Charles to treat him the same… except for Erik’s scent.

Now that he’d caught Erik’s natural scent, he couldn’t stop hunting it out through the muted mask of beta blandness that fell over his scent like a curtain. When he was drunk, Charles developed a terrible habit of draping himself over Erik and nosing at his scent glands, to which Erik invariably reacted with fury and violence. He just couldn’t help himself; that scent laced his dreams, drugged his waking hours with wafts of remembrance. He was a little alarmed at his own behavior; he’d never reacted this way to an omega before, and he’d slept with his fair share.

That scent, though. It was so very _Erik_ ; as purely intoxicating as his mind was. Piquant and prickly, but if you waited for a moment, breathed in the deeper notes, it mellowed into something so rich and beautiful that it stunned Charles with how badly he _wanted._

Eventually, they were friends again. The longer Charles went without repeating the Paris experiment in the ever-changing but eternally similar procession of hotel rooms with double beds and slightly grotty carpeted floors, the more Erik relaxed around him, eventually resuming their usual banter. He teased Charles about his wardrobe, his money, his squeamishness with a gun and Charles smiled and nodded, because it was all true, and because Erik was beautiful when his eyes crinkled with amusement. Because the surprise in Erik’s eyes during his rare laughs—as though shocked by his capacity for mirth—had snared Charles as surely as metal bars, as prisoner’s rope.

They traded book recommendations. Erik repaid Charles’s _Charlotte’s Web_ with a Steinbeck tome as thick as Charles’s head. They both had an affection for the Arthurian mythos; when T.H. White’s collection came out, Charles bought them a copy from the Strand, and they took turns reading to each other at night, Charles sinking into Erik’s light, rolling accent and the steady hum of his mind as he read, the fierce weight of his attention finally on something other than Charles or Sebastian Shaw, perhaps for the first time all day.

“’Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution,’” Erik read, and Charles drank him in and murmured, “Indeed.”

And he loved Erik, he knew now. It was as clear to him as Raven’s absence, as known to him as Mendel’s tenets, as lovely and intangible as Erik’s scent hanging in the air.  
  
  
  
In Seville, Erik, exhausted with how far he’d pushed himself deflecting the bullets that had been fired at them when they’d raided an operation that smuggled arms to Nazi sympathizers across Europe, knocked over the chess set, and Charles knelt down to help him pick up the scattered bishops and knights. He reached for the white queen just as Erik did; and their hands brushed. He could feel the heat of Erik’s skin, could smell that _scent_ where it was strongest, behind Erik’s ears, in the hollows of his collarbone. Perhaps he’d been projecting the _want_ he felt, because Erik flushed and jerked his hand away. He didn’t retreat to the bathroom for the rest of the night, though, so Charles felt it was, all in all, a step forward in their partnership.

In Dublin, Erik fell asleep hunched over his Shaw research and Charles carefully spread a blanket over his shoulders. He’d wake up with a horrific crick in his neck, but Charles couldn’t stand to watch him shiver on top of that.

In Frankfurt, Charles almost died. Bad things happened when he and Erik weren’t trailing each other around like shadows, he’d come to find. A ratty little art dealer and forger, on the run now that his associates were being picked off one by one. Charles and Erik had split up, not expecting any violence; by all accounts, the man was a coward. Charles had traipsed to his family’s homes, asking his sister and ex-wife, posing as a bill collector; Erik had tackled the hideouts and bolt-holes in the grimier half of the city. Charles had been loitering in an alley waiting for Erik to catch up to him when a noise had made him turn his head. Just a squirrel, eating trash—but then a cold press at the back of his head, a sensation he was familiar with from the number of times Erik had drilled him on what to do, which basically boiled down to _wait for Erik to snatch the gun away,_ except Erik wasn’t here and Charles couldn’t manipulate metal and he couldn’t even raise his hand to his temple to focus his own power, and oh god he was going to die.

He hoped that Erik would search for Raven in his stead, would kill Shaw and continue looking for his wayward sister. “Turn around,” hissed their mark. “I want to see your face when you die,” and he turned, hoping against hope he would see Erik in the crowd, even if it was his stricken face as the gunshot impacted his skull and wiped away all thought.

He was so distracted he didn’t even hear the mind approaching—not from the crowd, but from the other direction. Erik vaulted over the low wall and, without breaking stride, shoved his shoulder into the man’s gut, his arm coming up to knock the gun away from Charles. The man cried out, let go of the gun; it hung in midair, turned slowly and inexorably to point at the man. Erik was breathing hard, Charles even harder, and there was a wildness in Erik’s eyes, a truly feral light that made Charles shiver all over and feel, inexplicably, safe.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Erik snarled in German, which he’d been teaching Charles at night. He seized the gun from midair and leveled it at the man, who was praying, pleading, tears streaming down his face as he blubbered. Charles, suddenly very aware that a man was about to lose his life in front of him, grabbed Erik’s arm and pulled; Erik’s grip on the gun was unyielding. “We need him to tell us what he knows,” Charles said frantically.

Erik still didn’t put the gun down, but he inclined his head. “Go on, then,” he said softly, dangerous as a slinking viper in tall grass.

With shaking fingers, Charles raised his hand to his temple and concentrated—it came easier now that Erik had made him practice, even he was he exhausted, even when he was distracted, even when Erik had been pointing a gun at him and snarling invective that made him puff up with rage and quiver with laughter at the play-acting. He rifled through his memories, not taking the time for finesse; the discordant clanging of the man’s panic was giving him a headache. “He’s never met Shaw,” Charles reported. “Our contact was wrong.” Distantly, he wondered when they had stopped being Erik’s contacts and started being _their_ contacts. “He’s been forging lost art to repatriate to survivors while the originals circulate among former Nazi officials, though, and he killed his son when he found out, so if you want to kill him, I won’t argue with you.”

“Good,” Erik said brusquely, and fired.

Erik dragged Charles back to the hotel with a harsh grip on his wrist, his expression still a storm of intensity that left innocent Frankfurtians scattering in their path. It wasn’t the first time Charles had been in danger, but it was the first time that Charles had been _so close_ to death, and he was feeling a little shaky and grateful for Erik’s looming, very uncomforting presence. Erik pushed Charles to sit on the bed and slammed the door, then leaned against it with an inscrutable expression on his face. His mind was still thrumming with tension, and a strange sense of resolve that Charles wasn’t sure he liked.

“Thank you,” he said. “For coming to find me. I don’t know what would have happened if—”

“I do,” Erik said sharply. “He would’ve killed you.” He took a faltering step toward Charles. “He would have _killed_ you, Charles—”

“I’m fine, thanks to you—”

“You can’t _do_ that, you can’t put yourself in danger like that—”

“Why not?” Charles asked wearily. “It’s what you do, isn’t it? Every time you walk into a drug den or weapons stash—”

Erik’s face twisted with rage. “I can take care of myself, you know that—”

“And _I_ can take care of myself—”

“Evidently not—”

“Today was a mistake,” Charles admitted. “I shouldn’t have suggested we split up. But Erik, it’s all right—” he said, wondering how Erik’s obvious panic and concern had soothed him, made him steady, made him a rock for Erik to lap against like an uneasy wave. “I’m all right.”

Erik’s expression, usually so blank, now frothed with fire. “You—you—”

He moved with predatory intent toward Charles, his long strides eating up the floor between them. And then—

—he kissed him.

Charles made a shocked noise against Erik’s mouth. Erik didn’t hesitate, pushing forward as though he wanted to devour Charles whole. Charles hands came up hesitantly, first to Erik’s shoulders, then buried in his hair as he dragged him closer, closer, he wanted to open up and consume Erik, to seal him into his soul and keep him safe there, keep him close there. Erik’s lips moved against his, spit-slick and angry, and Charles kissed him back with equal fury, a fury that they hadn’t been doing this all along, that Erik had deprived him of this for so long, this bliss, this mind-wiping purity.

Erik finally broke off, gasping, but Charles hauled him back in. He pressed fierce kisses to Erik’s mouth, then down his jawline and throat until he reached the hollow of it, where he lingered, lapping up sweat and the growing smell of Erik’s arousal. “I—thought—you’d—never—do—that,” he gasped in between kisses.

“Shut up, shut _up,_ ” Erik grunted. His long fingers gripped the fabric over Charles’s shoulders hard, almost hard enough to tear. Charles grinned, raised a finger to his temple.

 _Like this?_ he projected, and Erik snarled and snatched his wrist and wrestled him down to bed, Charles laughing all the way, and he put up a perfunctory struggle against Erik but even a perfunctory struggle ended with them rolling off the bed and landing hard onto the floor, Charles on top of Erik ( _where he belonged,_ snarled an alpha part of his brain that he tried not to listen to too much), both of them panting hard. From the floor below them, someone banged on the ceiling. They giggled, then hushed, breathing hard, staring at each other as though they could communicate without words, without powers, with gazes alone.

“We should probably talk about this,” Charles murmured.

“Yeah,” Erik said. “I don’t want to, though.”

“Nor do I,” Charles said, and licked a stripe down his throat, and that effectively put an end to that conversation.

Charles lost track of their clothes and limbs soon enough. The next morning, he would hazily look over the room and wonder how Erik’s jacket had landed on that lampshade, and whether it was a fire hazard if it stayed there until he was slightly more awake, or how his suspenders had gotten knotted around one of the bedposts, or where his own vest was (someone had kicked it under the bed). He remembered breaking their kisses to sit up and strip Erik out of his jacket and shirt, he remembered Erik crouching and then shoving him hard enough against the wall to rattle the picture frames so that he could mouth at Charles’s hardness through his trousers, he remembered pinning Erik against the wall, pleasantly surprised to find that he was stronger than him when Erik seemed to be so strong to him, and fumbling with the buttons of his trousers.

And he remembered getting Erik naked. The scars which almost seemed to fade into the low light of the lamp (covered as it was with Erik’s jacket), the neat waist, the line of his shoulders, broad for an omega, but which Charles couldn’t stop picturing how they would look shaking with sweat and exertion. His long legs and perfectly biteable ass and the way he glared at Charles with such challenge in his eyes, like he was challenging to him to single combat to the death and not a night of passion between flimsy hotel sheets. His cock, _very_ impressive for an omega. Charles ached to put it in his mouth.

Looking at him, bare, Charles couldn’t help but gentle his kisses, which seemed to leave Erik pleasantly stunned. He wondered if anyone had ever done that for him before—be gentle. He took Erik by the elbow and the waist and guided him back over to the bed; he couldn’t help but press up against him, feel his _heat_ burning, branding his skin, but when Erik tried to surge up against him he pushed him lightly down onto the sheets and crawled on top of him, Erik’s thighs bracketing his own where he knelt.

Erik’s left hand drifted downward; he dragged the heel of his palm across his cock, just a perfunctory stroke, before he reached behind him and jammed two fingers into himself. He winced. Charles snatched at his hand and withdrew his fingers gently. “Let me,” he said, and didn’t finish. _Take care of you. Do this. Let me love you._

He lowered his face down to the spot he had almost not dared to look at when he’d undressed Erik, for fear he would lose his mind and come right there, or pin Erik to the ground like an animal and rut inside him—the sweet pink blossom of his hole. “Let me,” he whispered against, transfixed by the way that rosy ring of muscle trembled when his breath brushed against it, already a little wet from slick, though not much—one of the side effects of suppressants he’d read about after Erik had revealed the truth of who he was on one of the mad research-binges he’d been known for at Oxford. That was all right. It just meant Charles would have to spend a little longer coaxing him open, readying him for Charles’s desire.

He let his tongue flick out, tasting, and Erik sobbed loudly enough that he stuffed his fist in his mouth to muffle the sound.

Charles _devoured_ him, his tongue caressing the soft rim of his hole before diving inside. Erik’s limbs spasmed and Charles, grinning, moved to pin his legs down. He let his tongue lash against Erik’s hot core, felt the resistance in him slowly loosen as slick began to flow, silver trails dripping down his chin, coursing down Erik’s thighs like rivulets of sweat. The wet noises their bodies made together as Charles speared Erik with his tongue and began to move in and out in a simulacrum of fucking went straight to his cock, and so did Erik’s damnable, maddening scent. He could dampen it under clothes and with suppressants but here, at the core of him, he couldn’t hide it; Charles sank into it like a fever dream, and he felt he could feast at the alter of Erik forever, if his cock didn’t ache so terribly much to get inside him.

He added a finger alongside his tongue, slowly, rubbing gently against Erik’s inner walls and feeling slick gush out to meet him. Charles pulled them in and out in unison, making Erik keen desperately and writhe harder. “More,” he gasped out, “more, more, please, Charles, please—”

“Just a little longer, my darling,” Charles murmured, and added another finger, licking the place where his fingers sank into Erik’s body and relishing the soft sobbing sounds he made. On the third finger, Erik was already trying to clamp down on him like his fingers were a knot, though Charles knew that he wasn’t nearly full enough; Erik’s noises were growing more desperate with frustration and anger, and Charles skipped the fourth finger and only took one last, lingering taste of Erik’s slick, licking up the sheen of it on his thighs as more welled from his hole, before he hesitated, hovering above Erik, and said, “Do you want to be on your stomach?”

Erik, flushed red from cheeks to belly, blinked slowly and seemed to come back to himself. “…No,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I want to see you.”

Charles smiled and kissed him, and Erik moaned into his mouth, and Charles thrust against his hip, knowing that Erik could taste himself on Charles’s lips and finding that the hottest thing he’d ever experienced. Charles dragged his boxers, the only thing either of them were still wearing, down his legs and moaned as his cock sprung free. He hitched Erik’s legs up over his shoulders and positioned the very tip of his cock against Erik’s cunt, smearing precum against him and watching, nearly dazed with lust, as the white fluid pearling at the tip of his cock mingled with Erik’s slick, slipped inside him. _Inside_ him.

“Get on with it—” Erik started to snarl, and then Charles thrust forward and Erik _screamed_ , scrabbling at Charles’s back, his thighs trembling with the shock of being fucked open, and Charles pressed soothing kisses to his hair and temple, whispering platitudes as Erik trembled on his cock.

“It’s okay, it’ll be all right, it’s okay,” he gasped—

Erik’s thigh slipped from his shoulders to wrap around his waist and Erik hit Charles with his heel so hard that Charles was definitely going to have a bruise there the next morning. “Fucking _move!”_ Erik shouted. Charles’s hips stuttered forward finding an easy rhythm, shallow at first, and then harder as Erik began to adjust to his cock, his inner walls making way for Charles’s steady thrusts, as he slipped deeper and deeper into his body, prying him open, fitting himself into Erik’s most secret and sacred places. Erik made gasping noises that seemed as if they were almost torn out of his throat, little hiccuping sounds with every pistonlike thrust of Charles’s hips. Charles could barely hear them over the heave of his own breath as he began fucking into Erik as hard as he could, chasing those noises, hard enough that the headboard was slamming against the wall, hard enough that they would surely be asked to leave in the morning, and Charles had never felt more alive.

The feeling—perfection. Erik’s body felt perfectly fitted to his cock, just on the right side of too-tight, but yielding and soft and hot and wet inside in all the right places. Erik let one hand fall to the bedsheets, where he fisted them and ran his hand fretfully over them in turns, like he wasn’t sure which would soothe him more. Charles’s knot had already been present, a slight swell at the base of his cock, when he thrust in, but now the thrusts were getting harder, it was more difficult to pull in and out of Erik, the swell of his knot catching on Erik’s rim and making him sound as though he were dying.

“Don’t—” Erik gasped, and with difficulty, Charles stopped, his arms shaking with frustration but his mind finally clearing.

“Don’t you want—” Charles asked uncertainly.

“I don’t—I don’t like being knotted,” Erik whispered, and there was a whole world of meaning in those words. Charles thought about how taking his knot had made the omegas he’d bedded sweet and sleepy, more vulnerable in that moment than any other, thought of the way Erik had said, _Do you have any idea what I had to do to get the information I needed?_ He pressed a kiss to Erik’s forehead and withdrew, still fucking into him, but not pushing the knot into his body, and Erik moaned and Charles pretended not to see the tears leak out of his screwed-shut eyes because he _knew_ Erik, and knew that he would not want Charles to mention it.

It took him a moment to get back into his rhythm, but when he did, he knew that he was close. Erik shuddered beneath him, and Charles reached down and fondled that lovely thick cock, stroked the soft skin of his balls, pressed his fingers against Erik’s perineum, and then pushed a finger in alongside his cock, causing Erik to cry out and spasm around him. He couldn’t knot him, but he could still make Erik feel _full_ , could still make him come on his cock alone; he pushed another finger in alongside and Erik keened, rocking back and forth on the bed now. He hid his face in his shoulder but Charles tucked a finger under his chin and directed his gaze upward—”I thought you wanted to see—” he murmured—

And then he felt it, Erik’s aching tumble over the chasm of his orgasm, and he pushed in a third finger and Erik opened his mouth to cry out but no sound came out as he began to come as well, his cock spurting white fluid over his belly and the sheets, and Charles fucked him through it, through the way Erik clamped down on him, trying to milk a knot that wasn’t there, and Erik met his eyes and wetness shone in the blue-green of them in the dim light and it was the _hottest_ thing Charles had ever seen and then he was coming as well, not as much come as if he’d knotted but hardly the modest handful of an omega’s orgasm, either. His telepathy lashed out without warning and latched onto Erik’s mind, and he was flooded with the single pure note of Erik’s pleasure. It had never happened like that before; he’d never been able to use his telepathy at such an intense level, practically diving into someone else’s mind, without a finger to his temple, and during sex he usually was doing other things with his hands. Maybe it was because Erik was a mutant, or maybe it was because he loved him, but for a single blissful moment, his mind and Erik’s were one, and the slight tension of Erik’s scars were the aftermath of his own scars and Erik’s boneless bliss was his own, and then he was back in his own body, his senses singing, his telepathy purring in the back of his mind like a satisfied cat.

He watched with fascination as come and slick dripped out of Erik’s hole around his softening cock. He withdrew gingerly—Erik winced but didn’t complain—and ran a questing finger over Erik’s cunt as it puckered shut around his seed. He felt dazed, like he’d just woken from a very good dream and wasn’t quite sure what was reality and what was fiction. Charles slumped down beside Erik, and hesitantly nuzzled at the space behind his ear. Erik didn’t curl into it, but he didn’t turn away either, which Charles took for a good sign.

They breathed for a long moment. Charles was most of the way to sleep when Erik said, “Do you think less of me now?”

Charles was too muzzy and sex-stupid to decipher Erik right now. “Now what?”

“Now that you’ve had your cock in me,” Erik snapped.

He sat up, glaring at Charles, and, alarmed, Charles shook the sleep out of his head and ran a soothing hand over Erik’s side, which surprisingly worked, though it seemed that Erik was chagrined by the fact that it did. “Of course not. You’re—you’re _Erik._ ” He hunted for more words, but strangely that seemed to be the right thing to say, because Erik relaxed under his hand and slowly, hesitantly, like a beaten animal, lay back down next to Charles. Charles dared to put an arm over Erik’s shoulders, thinking all the while how ridiculous it was that he’d just had his cock inside of him, and yet casual touch felt like an uncrossed barrier between them. But Erik sighed and relaxed into him. Charles skated his fingers across the skin of his back, felt goosebumps rise in the wake of his touch.

“He killed my mother,” Erik said, and Charles, who had begun to drift again, was suddenly wide awake. “In the camps,” Erik clarified. “He was going by another name then—Klaus Schmidt. He was the head of medical research… I nearly pulled the gates down, when they separated us, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t do it on demand. He told me to move the coin, or he would shoot my mother. And I couldn’t—”

His voice cracked, and Charles drew him close, curled around him, lay his head down on Charles’s shoulder as he shook. “That’s how they knew about my mutation, in Strasbourg. The man who took me—he worked with Schmidt. They did… experiments, they tested me—how far they could push me until I broke—”

“Shh,” Charles said, though he could barely comprehend what Erik was saying, the rage had settled over him so heavily. Erik. Erik, who felt so deeply and was so scarred, Erik who had already been through so much, to do this to _a child_ — “Shh. Shh, it’s all right now, you escaped them—”

“I _never_ escaped them,” Erik whispered. “They’re in my head, they’re in my bones. I—I don’t like you in my head because I don’t want you to see _them_ there, to see what they’ve made of me—”

“No,” Charles said fiercely. “No. I wish—I wish you would _understand_ what I see, what I hear, when I’m inside your mind. It’s beautiful, Erik. So beautiful. I—I love it.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I love you.”

Erik was silent for a long time, and Charles felt himself longing to bring two fingers to his temple to find out what he was thinking. Time stretched out like taffy before them. “I love you too,” he said at last, as though he were afraid of the words, and Charles made a noise that was a little like a laugh and a little like a sob and clutched Erik to him, feeling at last the piece that he hadn’t realized was missing from his heart click into place. 

Erik closed his eyes and curled into Charles. Though Charles felt wide awake now, and a little like he wanted to throw himself a parade, Erik’s breath seemed to be evening out, as though, now that he’d gotten his feelings out, he was more exhausted than he had been after a good fucking. “You smell like apples,” he said softly, and Charles’s arms tightened around him involuntarily. “Apples… and sage.” And then he was asleep. He didn’t snore or move in his sleep much; Charles could only tell because of the way his eyes blinked shut and didn’t open again. Erik fought to keep his eyes open for as long as he could, even he was drowsing; like if he could see a threat coming, he could protect them. Charles felt a great swell of fondness for him—yes, and love—and pressed a kiss to the suggestion of curls falling across Erik’s forehead.

Love. It seemed impossible. Charles closed his own eyes, though it was a while before he fell asleep. The last thing he thought was that he hoped he wouldn’t wake up and find this was all a dream.

He woke and Erik was in his arms and joy flashed through him so fiercely and powerfully that Erik stirred, obviously having been roused by Charles’s inadvertent projection. “Charles?” he said sleepily. Charles thought it was adorable, though _that_ thought he was keen to keep to himself, lest Erik kill him.

“Shh,” Charles said, “I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”  
  
  
  
After that, he started courting Erik properly, because even if they were fucking like animals every chance they got and twice after missions that got the adrenaline up properly, Erik deserved to be wooed, to be treated like any other omega, like the sweet and precious thing he was, deep, _deep_ down. Erik continued to refuse to let him pay for more than half of their meals and lodging and eschewed the usual trinkets and gifts, which was frustrating, because what was the _point_ in having a ridiculous family fortune if you weren’t allowed to spoil your omega with it? (It took quite long enough for Erik to settle down when Charles called him _my omega,_ but that was another battle entirely.) But there were small things he could do.

In Lyon, Erik let him into his mind. Not conditionally, as he always had before, but permanently, opened up as sweetly as he had when he’d let Charles fuck him, let Charles set up the kind of outpost he’d once had in Raven’s mind, the kind where he always had a vague humming awareness of the music of Erik’s mind at the corner of his own. Charles found himself humming along sometimes, and Erik would give him strange, startled looks, but Charles could hardly explain _that’s the music of your mind,_ so he only smiled and kissed Erik firmly until that look went away.

In London they made a brief stop and Charles made a run up to Oxford to one of his seedier contacts from his university days, and got Erik a dossier on the London criminal underworld. Seeing his eyes light up at genuinely new leads, and the broad smile with which he favored Charles afterward, made his inner alpha roughly jump for joy and click his heels together.

In Amsterdam, he realized that he could at last do something he’d always wanted to do, which was turn to Erik, who hadn’t moved but was stiff as a statue and whose eyes were darting wildly behind his eyelids, and gently, sweetly chase his nightmares away. 

In Athens, he stretched his telepathy far enough that an entire drug ring followed him single file, like meek lambs, through the winding Grecian streets and to the warehouse where Erik had been irritably pacing ever since they’d gotten there and found that it had been deserted by the gangsters who’d evidently been tipped off, and Charles smiled as he lined them up for Erik’s idea of interrogation—a rare treat, as Charles was the one who did most of the interrogating nowadays. 

In Mykonos, Erik’s scars were bothering him again. Charles had fucked the tension out of him a couple of times before, but today he knelt up on the bed next to him and ran his fingers down the lines of his spine, working his thumbs into the flesh of Erik’s scars. Erik tensed. “What are you doing?”

“I want to make you feel good. Not like that,” Charles said when Erik snorted. “Just let me…”

And those were the magic words, had been the magic words ever since they’d fucked the first time, and Erik relaxed under his hands and let Charles massage out the tension he carried in his scars, a story rising to his lips as he worked about how he’d used to do this for his mother when she was hungover, and for Raven the time she’d injured herself playing softball with the other girls. Erik reached behind him and caught Charles’s hand, their fingers tangling together.

“So I’m the last,” Erik said, “in a line of people that you’ve loved that you’ve done this for.”

“You’re the last,” Charles agreed quietly.

Erik smiled, a private, sweet thing, and pressed a kiss to Charles’s wrist, and Charles had not thought he could fall more deeply in love, but here they were.

In Salzburg, they rang in 1959 and didn’t even look once at the fireworks outside, too wrapped up in each other and the champagne Charles had bought against Erik’s protests and the promises they were pressing silently against each other’s lips.  
  
  
  
They talked about it only once. Lying in bed, Charles partly sprawled over Erik, the alpha part of him purring with satisfaction at covering his mate bodily, keeping him safe, though he knew that Erik would roll his eyes at best if he ever articulated any of these more instinctual interpretations of their relationship. It was somewhere in Sicily, perhaps Palermo, and Erik was drifting questing fingers through Charles’s hair, his seed still leaking out of him after a round of vigorous lovemaking. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before,” Erik said, a note of surprise in his voice, which was low, as though if someone, even Charles, overheard him, they might snatch away his happiness. As though it had been a mistake for him to have it in the first place, a mistake that could be rectified at any time.

Charles sighed into Erik’s shoulder, a pleased large-cat sound. “Nor I,” he said. “I… what we do is… hard. But you make it… bearable. More than bearable. The only place in the world I’d rather be.”

Erik was quiet for a long time. “What do you want to do?” he said finally. Charles glanced at him; from the thin curtains, the streetlights outside cast bars of light on his face, which looked otherworldly, ethereal almost. “When… when Shaw is dead. When Raven’s been found.”

“I’d like you to meet her,” Charles said contemplatively. “I think… you’d get along. You both already have one thing in common, and that’s a deep-rooted desire to give me hell at all times,” and Erik laughed, as Charles had meant him to. “Then… I don’t know.” _Stay with you,_ he wanted to say. Wherever that took him, wherever Erik wanted to wander next, but he wasn’t sure if the words would be welcome.

“Would you go back to school?” Erik said quietly. “Get your PhD like you were going to?”

Charles tapped considering fingers on Erik’s bare back. “It would be nice,” he admitted. “I always wanted to do genetics research. And now, knowing that there are people like us… wouldn’t you want to find them? Study them?” Erik shuddered under his touch, and with horror, Charles realized what he must have been thinking of. “Not like that! I just meant… don’t you want to know where they came from, our powers? Know what… what we’re meant to do in the world?”

“I know what I’m meant to do in the world,” Erik murmured.

Charles shook his head. “That’s not all you are, Erik. I… I understand. Why you want to kill Shaw. Why you have to kill Shaw, even. But there is so much more to you than you know, not just pain and anger. There is so much that you can do, you’re so clever, so resourceful—if you wanted you could get your education with me, you wouldn’t even be the only omega in the academy anymore.” As the world unfolded before him, Charles realized that he _wanted_ it, that world where he and Erik were working side-by-side, with a ferocity he had previously not suspected he was capable of. “What do _you_ want to do is the question we should be asking.”

“I want you by my side,” Erik said simply, and Charles closed his eyes and drowned in the words like a man dying of thirst in the desert who had just seen the promise of water. “I never thought… that I could have these things, you know. Before you. I want to… I want to be your mate, your real mate. I want to bear your children. I want to have a life with you, Charles.”

“You _are_ my real mate,” Charles whispered into the shell of his ear, and Erik closed his eyes and rested against him, his breath puffing softly against his skin, and Charles held him, the most precious thing he’d ever touched, and hoped he would dream of their future together.  
  
  
  
In Prague, again, Charles stopped outside a pawn shop. Erik was at the library, doing research about who had rented houses in a certain district in the city immediately after the war had ended, and Charles was ostensibly tracking down the old informant who had led him to this city in the first place, but really just wandering through the city after Erik had banished him from his presence for being too distracting. There was a display of wedding bands in the window.

He didn’t end up going inside. Though he knew that Erik would hate it, he wanted to give Erik something expensive and custom-made, not quite as beautiful as he was, which would be impossible, but something approaching it. He’d kept his father and mother’s wedding bands, but sizing aside, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to give Erik something so steeped in the past when they were building a future together, and they were all the way in Westchester besides. He ended up wandering to the rich side of the city, the jewelry district, and stopped in a store that reminded him of Erik—fashionable, but in the old sense, with strong hints of tradition and legacy. The shop girl smiled at him, but professionally—Charles supposed that most of the men who stopped in here were in committed relationships. “Looking for something for someone in particular?” she asked.

“A ring,” Charles said. His Czech had much improved since the last time he’d been in this city. “For a mate.”

The shop girl’s smile widened. “Do you have any specifications in particular, sir?”

Charles thought for a moment. “What’s the strongest metal you have?”  
  
  
  
That evening, in their hotel room, Erik flung his jacket over their bed—they still got two for propriety’s sake, but took no pains to conceal that they slept in the same one and trusting to housekeeping’s discretion—and ran a hand through his hair, mussing the pomade that he’d put in it that morning. “Nothing,” he fumed. “Hours and hours of nothing. I might as well take a picture of Shaw to every estate agent in the city and ask if they sold to this man.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Charles said. “There’s always the money trail. We can go back to Seville, see if there’s anything we missed.”

Erik flumphed on the bed but turned his head to look at Charles. “No need,” he admitted grouchily. “I found a possible lead on an art dealer or smuggler of some kind. Concealed attic, bad pseudo-Czech alias. We can check it out tomorrow.”

“See?” Charles said cheerfully. “Not all bad.”

“You’re in a chipper mood tonight.”

“That’s nervousness,” Charles said. “I get smile-y when I’m nervous.”

“Why are you nervous?” Erik said, voice slow and seductive as molasses. “I’m already yours for the taking, aren’t I?”

“You aren’t,” Charles said. “But I hope you will be.”

He knelt. Erik sat bolt upright. “Charles—”

Charles fumbled for the traditional words. Though one day he’d expected to kneel to an omega or female beta and propose to them, he’d thought he’d rather have more time to prepare. “Erik—my heart and soul are in your hands,” he said, trying to remember the rules of his long-ago comportment classes. Erik deserved a legitimate proposal, the kind of sweet, ritualistic thing the upper classes did, something fitting to his worth and value. “I want you by my side for all my days. I want you to know how much you mean to me—” No, that wasn’t right— “—how much you mean—”

“Stop,” Erik said, and Charles fell silent, his heart pounding in his chest, not daring to even breath. “You’re so—stilted—this isn’t you, Charles. What… what are you asking me?”

“To be my mate,” Charles breathed. “Properly. To let me mark you, to let me scent you—to promise to me that you will never let anyone else touch you, and I’ll do the same—please, Erik, say yes. Say yes. Be mine entirely, and let me be yours.”

“I—I—” Erik’s eyes were wide. He looked almost frightened. The viola-string of his mind was vibrating at a fever-pace, a high, alarmed note that made Charles’s stomach churn. “I _can’t,_ Charles, I’m still—everyone thinks I’m a beta—maybe someday—”

“Go off the suppressants,” Charles pleaded. “Please, you know they’re bad for you—and I’ll take care of you, you know I will—you have me now, you don’t have to—to do the things you used to to get information—I’ll make sure you never falter, that it never once affects what we do, I’ll pluck what we need from their minds, I promise you’ll never regret it. Please. I can’t stand another day where you stand there, mine but not mine, and I know I can’t touch you in public, that I have to deal with beta women propositioning you, that I know no one _knows_ that we’re one.” His knees ached, but he didn’t dare shift. The ring box felt heavy in his hand. “I—I want to introduce you to Raven as my mate. My _person,_ above all others. My own. Say yes, Erik. Please.”

Erik gently slipped the ring out of the box and examined it. His mind had quieted to a deep, low thrum that Charles couldn’t quite interpret, every measure of his attention as it was on Erik’s lovely long fingers running over the simple silvery band, the ornamentation sparse but the workmanship, as he could probably tell, meticulous. “Titanium,” he murmured. “How much did this cost you?”

“Not enough,” Charles said. “I would give you the moon if you asked for it, you know.”

Erik half-smiled. “I don’t doubt it, the way you throw money around,” he said. He slipped the ring onto his fourth finger and Charles made a noise in the back of his throat, pure relief and satisfaction—collars were outdated in this day and age, but there was still _something_ about watching his omega proudly bear a token of his love, his devotion, a ring of silver binding him to Charles, something that he would never take off. Erik smiled shyly at it, then grinned at Charles, a smile of such blinding beauty that Charles felt a little light-headed. He joyfully sank into Erik’s mind, which welcomed him with soft night-music.

He took Erik’s hand and pressed a kiss to the ring. “Mine,” he sighed. “Mine at last.”

“You’ll have to wait a few days until the suppressants wear off before to mark me properly,” Erik said. “I hope you don’t mind if I wear this until then.”

Some would, Charles knew. The old-fashioned were never satisfied until an omega was _truly_ theirs in every way. “Consider it a promise,” Charles said, and then fumbled in his pocket again. “Oh! I got one for myself as well.”

Erik smiled again. That was another eccentricity of modern alphas—marking Charles as Erik’s as surely as Erik’s was Charles, even if it wasn’t true biologically. “May I?” he said, gesturing to the ring box, and Charles handed it over, and Erik gently, gently slipped the ring onto his finger.

“There,” he said. “It looks good on you.”

 _Not as good as it feels,_ Charles thought, and from Erik’s broad grin, he knew he’d heard him.  
  
  
  
In some ways, it was better that they were alpha and omega; no need to get married at a courthouse, which would be difficult since neither of them were citizens and the last time they were in this country, they’d killed a man. (Well, Erik had, which was true for most countries in Europe.) Everywhere recognized a proper mating mark between an alpha and omega as a valid marriage.

While the suppressants were still in effect, Charles and Erik hunted down the smuggler (human trafficker), wrested all information he had about Sebastian Shaw’s associates from his brain, and left him in a coma. Charles was well aware that Erik was scrutinizing him; it wasn’t the traditional way of wooing an omega, but Charles knew that Erik was seeing whether he could make good on his promise to be the crutch an omega needed to be as dangerous as Erik had been while posing as a beta. They had the whole thing wrapped up in eight hours, and then they holed up in the hotel room—Charles, with the help of a little telepathy, charmed his way into the honeymoon suite and then promptly got everyone at the desk to forget about it—with food and water and waited for Erik’s heat to start. They played chess and read and, of course, argued. Erik grew more contentious and contrary the closer his heat grew, which Charles found unaccountably sweet.

When Erik began pacing around, fanning himself with a brochure about walking tours, Charles sat on the bed and said, “Why don’t you lie down and I’ll make you feel a little better.”

“My heat won’t be for hours yet,” Erik snapped. “If you’re so keen, go take a shower and get yourself off, but I’ll be quite furious at you if you can’t get it up to fuck me properly.”

“That’ll be a change,” Charles said with wry amusement. “You? Furious? With me? Never.”

“I’m not angry with you often,” Erik said, caught off-guard. “…Am I?”

“No,” Charles said kindly, because it was true—he could tell from Erik’s mind that what one might perceive as anger was actually a combination of cool arrogance and occasional irritation, and rarely actual anger, except when he thought about Sebastian Shaw and the injustices that had been visited upon him and his people. (Which now, astonishing as it was, included Charles; he’d felt that anger when Charles had confessed the loneliness and neglect of his childhood, his mother who drank more than she saw him, his stepfather who was paranoid at best and explosive at worst.) “You’re lovely, Erik. Lie down.”

Erik’s scowl was less severe this time. “You said you’d never been with an omega during heat before, so let me abuse you of the notion that you’ll be able to help.”

“We’ll see,” Charles said peaceably. Erik begrudgingly lay down. Charles knelt over him, straddling him; though he wasn’t in full heat yet, he was warm, and the smell of ripe omega hung heavy in the air. Charles ran a hand down Erik’s vest, the thin white material clinging to his skin with sweat. Erik had been stripping out of his clothes all day, first removing the jacket, then the sweater, then the shirt—his trousers next until he was only in his boxers and vest and, incongruously, a pair of worn socks. Charles peeled them off and pressed an affectionate kiss to Erik’s left ankle, thinking that he would have to get Erik some new socks when they were mated and Erik could no longer object to Charles showering him in gifts, especially practical ones.

“Let me,” he said, and he slipped Erik’s vest off, running his fingers across the bared skin as a little reward to himself for when he’d done it. Then he hooked a finger beneath Erik’s boxers and tugged them off. “Turn over.”

Erik shot him a doubtful look, but did it. Charles positioned a pillow under his hips and spread his legs, just a little, enough that he could kneel between his thighs. He stroked a thumb across Erik’s hole, which was already pearlescent with slick, but not yet gushing the way it would when he was in full heat. “You’re beautiful,” he breathed, admiring the pinkness of Erik’s cunt against the creamy-pale skin of his buttocks and thighs, untouched by the sun as they were. Erik flushed and turned his head away, which was so adorable that Charles had to lean over him and kiss him.

“Charles, what—” Erik said into the kiss, and then moaned as Charles slipped a finger inside him without warning.

“I’ve heard,” Charles said sultrily, “that a little bit of foreplay makes the heat come faster.”

“That’s… a myth,” Erik gritted out.

“But isn’t it a fun one?” Charles said sweetly. He worked the finger in and out of Erik’s deliciously tight passage, rubbing the slick that was already coming faster into the rim of his hole. Erik gasped and spasmed around him—always so delightfully responsive, was Erik—and Charles took the opportunity of a moment when he relaxed, seemingly too overwhelmed to maintain the tension in his body any longer, to push in another finger, which got him trembling and moaning all over again. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, you know. Just put my fingers inside you and watch you writhe on them. See how long you could take it until you were begging me to fuck you, and then wait just a little longer. You’re lovely when you’re desperate, you know.”

“Fuck you,” Erik snarled, a curse which dissolved into a groan when Charles ran the edge of his nail gently, gently over the spot he’d found that was guaranteed to make him sweet, if not docile.

Charles added a third finger, and then a fourth, in quick succession. Slick poured from Erik’s cunt. He was panting now, face-down, fisting the bedsheets, and rocking back and forth on Charles’s fingers. His scent rose from him like a rippling heat wave, making Charles dizzy and hot, and the soft squelch as his fingers dove into Erik’s wet heat only added to his lust. He longed to plunge inside of him, to use his body ruthlessly until he was clenching and screaming around him, but not yet. Not yet. “Come on, my darling,” he murmured. “Rock back on my fingers, that’s it. I’ll keep them inside of you until you’re in full heat, and then I’ll just—slide right in—get you so loose that you can barely keep me inside—I’ll have to knot you before you feel full—that’s it—”

 _“Cha-a-arles,”_ Erik moaned.

“Shh, shh,” Charles said, screwing his fingers into Erik’s hole. “I know what you need. Just a little longer—just a little longer—”

And slick gushed wetly over his fingers as he pressed again at Erik’s prostate, and Erik screamed as his heat gave way and crashed over him like a tidal wave, and Charles hid a smile in Erik’s curls and kissed the bonding gland on the back of his neck and said, “Not such a myth after all,” and knew that if Erik had heard him he would’ve rolled his eyes, so he imagined Erik doing it for him; he was a little busy, after all. 

Charles stripped himself off in record time and had his cock out and pressed to Erik’s wet little hole. “Maybe this will finally get you to stop with the jealousy,” Charles mused. Erik squinted his eyes open, glaring at him. Charles wanted to get inside him, to fuck the attitude right out of him, but more than that he wanted one last glimmer of the Erik he was mating, the grumpy, contrary bastard he’d fallen in love with, so he kissed him again to silence his protests and sighed against his lips, “You were so presumptuous, you know.”

Erik spluttered and tore his mouth away from Charles’s. “Presumptous—!”

“Acting as if you were already mine. So jealous of everyone I slept with.” Charles grinned as he remembered the way Erik would grow cold and silent when he returned from a night in someone else’s sheets and try to play it off by saying that such dalliances were unprofessional at best and dangerous at worst. He knew better now, now that Erik had confessed that he’d wanted him from the moment Charles had told him, so warm and welcoming, like he’d never even heard of a reason to be afraid, that he wasn’t alone. “Admit you couldn’t let anyone else have me.”

“You’re a slut, Charles,” Erik said, and then yowled as Charles fucked into him, laughing, his hips setting a pounding steady rhythm that pressed Erik’s body into the bed. Erik struggled to gain purchase on the sheets, but he had no leverage, and was pushed up onto the bed with every thrust, his moans choked off whenever Charles shoved deep inside of him. His face was flushed with satisfied lust, his eyes screwed shut as he pushed back against Charles to the best of his ability. They fell silent as their coupling grew more intense, Charles pounding relentlessly against his inner walls to slake Erik’s terrible lust, which he could feel at the edges of his mind like a great devouring hunger, a desire to be _filled_ and _fucked_ and _owned._ Charles pressed into both Erik’s body and his mind simultaneously, feeling himself surrounded by that pure musical intensity, feeling Erik’s inner walls mold to his cock as closely as a tailor-made glove, and felt himself become a tool, just a cock and a knot and a body over him for Erik to sate himself with. _Charles, Charles, Charles,_ his name in that musical language, and he fucked Erik so hard it was as though he wanted to climb inside him and never escape.

The headboard slammed against the wall and whoever was on the other side beat an angry tattoo against it; Charles and Erik glanced at each other and burst out laughing, but Charles didn’t falter in his thrusts, he could feel himself getting close and chased his completion in Erik’s body. Erik’s knees finally found purchase on the sheets and he raised his hips into Charles’s brutal rhythm, his face still smushed into the pillows. Erik buried his face in his arms and pushed his ass back to meet Charles’s motions, and Charles knew how hard it was for him, to present like an omega, and stroked a soothing hand down his flank in thanks. Erik’s posture exposed the bonding mark on the back of his neck, and Charles drove forward like it was his magnetic north. His knot was swollen and huge, catching on Erik’s rim and making him sob with every thrust, and it was getting harder and harder to penetrate him—

With one last thrust Charles buried himself into Erik’s cunt and felt his cock began to spurt wetly against Erik’s insides. Erik didn’t scream; he merely moaned, a thin, high, weak sound, and clamped down on Charles’s knot tightly enough that Charles saw stars. Instinctively, because he surely wasn’t operating on anything more than bare instinct, he pressed his lips against the nape of Erik’s neck and _bit_ , and this time Erik did scream as he came, convulsing untouched on Charles’s cock, and it was the most amazing thing Charles had ever felt, bottled ecstasy, like he had torn down the tree of knowledge of life and death and gorged himself on the forbidden fruit. Erik’s thoughts exploded in his mind, a gorgeous cacophony of sound and color, and when Charles drew back, licking the blood from his lips, Erik was clutching for his hand and sobbing.

“Charles—Charles—”

“I’m here, my darling,” Charles murmured. “Right here. I’ll always be right here.”

Erik twisted on Charles’s knot and he pressed gentle fingers against Erik’s side, soothing him, stilling him. “Shh,” he said, “you’ll hurt yourself.”

“It’s too much—Charles—”

“Shh, shh, just a little longer. It’ll go down in a second. Just a little longer.”

He stroked loving fingers through his mate’s hair—his _mate!_ —and slowly Erik settled, growing sweet and complacent as molasses as the hormonal effects of the knot took hold. He made a noise a little bit like a purr and butted his head against Charles’s hand; Charles smiled and traced a finger over Erik’s elegant features, down the bridge of his nose and across his cheekbones, and Erik sighed and nosed at Charles’s shoulder, clumsy and affectionate. Charles waited for the knot to go down, for slick and come to gush around his softening cock as he pulled out, but Erik was already asleep before then, dozing indulgently on Charles’s shoulder, which had long gone numb from the weight. When he woke, Charles knew, he would be ravenous again; until then, Charles thought, twisting the ring Erik had settled on his fourth finger, he was free to appreciate this moment, the, not to put too cliche a point on it, first night of the rest of their lives.

Erik was his now. His irrevocably, his for eternity. If Charles were a religious man, he’d say their souls were bound together as surely as their bodies. He closed his eyes and pulled Erik closer, pressed a kiss to his sweat-matted curls, and listened to the telepathic hum of Erik’s dreaming, so much brighter and sharper now than it had ever been before, soul-music. In the sound, he drifted off to sleep.  
  
  
  
And somewhere in Argentina:

“You need to see this,” Quested said grimly.

With a sigh, Shaw pushed himself up from the deck chair where he’d been sunning himself, leaving Frost glittering behind him. “What is it?” he said, quick and clipped, a sure sign to hurry up if one didn’t want to find themselves at the center of an exploding supernova.

“Welser is dead.”

“Well,” Shaw said contemplatively, “if you hand out visas to Nazis, that sort of thing happens.”

“It wasn’t a disgruntled customer. His cousin said that two men came looking for those who had helped the Nazis, an alpha and an omega. They had… powers. Like us.”

That, at last, piqued Shaw’s attention. He was always on the lookout for recruits for their cause. “Did she say what they could do?”

“No. But she said that she didn’t intend to give them any information, but the alpha asked and it came spilling out.”

“Another telepath,” Shaw murmured. “Or perhaps some other mind-control power. Interesting. And the omega?”

“She didn’t know. But the way Welser was killed… he was impaled on a falling warehouse beam that pierced his heart. The rest of the warehouse was in good repair; the authorities consider it a mystery.” Quested reached into his inner pocket and withdrew a series of photographs. “She gave us these. She took them when they were coming back up the street after visiting her.”

Shaw took the photos and flipped through them. Most were blurry pictures of their backs, of little use. But one…

Shaw scraped a fingernail over the taller man’s image in profile, a rare clear shot just as the man was turning to laugh at something his companion had said. “Well, well,” he murmured. “Little Erik Lehnsherr. How lovely to see you again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At one point, a friend reading this wrote, "JUST FUCK HIM YOU DUMB KNOTHEAD" in response to Charles sleeping with another omega, which I think is the greatest compliment I've ever received on a work.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roll mouse over for warnings (heed them, there are many).

Emma had never seen Shaw so obsessed with someone.

Azazel had been permanently reassigned to keep an eye on the two who had apparently devoted their lives to tracking down and killing former Nazis. And not just any Nazis—

“They’re after you,” Azazel reported in July. “Everyone they’ve left alive has said the same thing: they want to know where Sebastian Shaw is.”

Instead of looking alarmed, or at least indifferent, Shaw looked flattered. “Is that so?”

“You know they’re coming to kill you?” Emma asked.

“A man’s greatness can be assessed through the measure of his enemies,” Shaw said. “And these are very _interesting_ enemies indeed.”

The alpha’s name was Charles Xavier, which Azazel recognized almost immediately. “He’s Raven’s brother,” he told Shaw. “There was no indication that he was also a mutant, or indeed, anything more than a drunk academic flirt.” Azazel’s spying also let them know that Shaw had been right—he was a telepath, like Emma. “Stronger, though,” he said, and grinned when he met her furious gaze. “When Lehnsherr doesn’t kill their targets, Xavier strips their minds from them and leaves them drooling vegetables.”

“He’d be an impressive addition to the Club,” Quested put in.

Emma gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to turn them to diamond and tear out Quested’s throat. Shaw tapped his fingers contemplatively on the kitchen table in their cabana and shrugged. “Perhaps. But the chances are that he’s looking for his dear sister in the hopes of tearing her away from me. No one tells Raven about this—understand?” Nods all around. “Now.” He flashed a grin that was all teeth. “Tell me about dear Erik.”

 _Dear Erik,_ Emma had learned, was special in that he was the first other mutant Shaw had ever encountered. He’d been just a boy then, not yet presented, but the _avarice_ in Shaw’s eyes when he’d learned that he’d grown up to be an omega was unmistakable. Shaw fucked her sometimes, desultorily, usually when he wanted an outlet for his dominance; he wasn’t queer, he’d told her once, he just liked that an alpha like her would bare her throat to him. But he’d never looked at her with such _fire,_ never traced her features greedily like he had with the photographs Azazel had brought back of the man he called _dear Erik._ He’d never, she had to acknowledge now, truly wanted her—not the way he wanted this whelp.  
  
  
  
It was almost too perfect, Shaw thought.

Little Erik Lehnsherr, all grown up, and an omega to boot. Shaw watched him from under an awning in Granada, leering out from behind a newspaper, thoroughly enjoying the way in which Erik, whose darting eyes were fixed on a distant associate of his, was totally unaware that his prey had now become the predator, that he was someone else’s quarry. He’d grown into a fine man, his features having lost that old delicacy and become something almost elegant. Tall for an omega, but that scent. It made Shaw think of ripe fruit, berries on the vine about to burst. Not sweet but spicy, but filled with the promise of fertile earth.

Shaw had thought about him from time to time, as the years had passed, as he’d encountered others of their kind, though Erik had been the first, and you never forgot your first. Regret, mostly, that he hadn’t had the time to take the boy with him when he’d escaped the closing ring of Allied forces around Auschwitz near the end of the war, half-dead and starved though he was, unlikely to survive the harrowing passage as he was. But never had the regret been so acute as it was when he stared at him now, at the glorious young man he’d become, and thought about all the time he’d missed. He should have been there for Erik’s first heat, should have been there to usher him, blushing and young, over the cusp of maturity. He should have been there to claim Erik as his own, to be his one and only. The boy was good-looking; surely he’d had partners, certainly in this new, enlightened age of the liberated omega.

When his target left, Erik dawdled for a moment, then stood and followed him down the street. Shaw drifted after him like a shadow, like the lingering animus of a nightmare, followed him down the rain-slick cobbled-paved streets, darted across to the other side of the road when Erik raised his head searchingly, as if scenting a predator. He glanced around, then, satisfied that no one was following him, turned into the seating area of a cafe.

The alpha was there. Xavier.

Dark brown hair and a welcoming smile, Shaw registered. He stood when Erik approached, causing Erik to wave him back down impatiently—his boy had never stood on ceremony—but. But then Erik leaned over and pressed a kiss to the alpha’s lips. 

The alpha’s hand fluttered up to the back of Erik’s head, drawing him in, deepening the kiss into something slow and passionate. He rubbed his thumb over the corner of Erik’s mouth and drank him down, and Erik sighed and swayed into the touch, the very picture of a young couple in love. Bile rose in the back of Shaw’s throat. He’d considered, briefly, just killing the two of them. Within the next few years, Cold War tensions would escalate to the point where he could make his move, nudged along by his Hellfire Club as necessary; there was no need for his own version of a _Lebensborn_ program, no urgency to take a mutant mate when soon enough the world would be ripe with potential mates. But watching Erik tilt his head into the kiss, surrender so sweetly when he’d never surrendered in the camps, never truly broken to Shaw’s will the way he’d longed for—it changed his mind.

He wanted his boy back. And he was going to get him.  
  
  
  
“They’re married,” Azazel reported bluntly as Emma watched on, and Shaw’s fingers curled into a fist.

“Is that so,” he said, and Emma exchanged looks with Azazel—they both knew that tone, that undercurrent of pure death, they’d both come off the worse from that tone. “Charles Xavier and my little Erik. Hmm.”

“It’s relatively new,” Azazel said, like that was any comfort. Alpha-omega bonds were, as far as anyone knew, unbreakable except by death. Emma almost felt sorry for Charles Xavier, fellow telepath, and Raven Xavier, who would surely be killed the moment she found out what happened to her brother. “Reports from as recently as late February indicate that Lehnsherr was traveling as a beta.”

“Heat suppressants,” Shaw murmured, and tsked disapprovingly. “But no longer? I could smell him when I followed him that afternoon.”

“No.” Azazel bared his teeth. “I kept out of sight, but I could smell him, too. All omega.”

Emma’s first indication of what Shaw had planned for Erik Lehnsherr happened that afternoon, after Shaw had dismissed the rest of the inner circle of the Hellfire Club. She was giving him a massage, rubbing power into his shoulders with her diamond hands, when he said, from where he’d been nursing his scotch, “Emma. Do you think you could break a bond with your telepathy?”

Emma blinked. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never tried.”

Shaw smirked and turned back to his scotch. “Try,” he said. “And get back to me.”

(It turned out that she could, but the alpha’s screaming was giving her a headache, so she neatly ripped his head from his body to shut him up.)  
  
  
  
Over the next few months, Shaw sucked up information about Erik and his alpha like a sponge. He tasked Azazel with subtle ways of testing their powers, seeded information among his informants and tracked the pair of them through the bodies they left in their wake. It became clear that not only was Erik desirable in and of himself, his powers would be an excellent complement to the rest of the Hellfire Club, with its potential for both offensive and defensive capabilities.

“I think the telepath sensed me today,” Azazel warned one evening over chianti.

Shaw frowned. “Were you staying out of range?”

“Out of Frost’s range, yes, but I think this telepath is different. Stronger, I said before to irritate her, but I think it’s true. I was on the rooftops a few buildings back, so he couldn’t see me, but he startled and was looking for _someone.”_

“What were you thinking of?”

“You,” Azazel admitted. “The plans for Moscow. I got out of there as soon as possible, but I don’t know how much he heard.”

Shaw tapped his fingers against his lips. “Yes,” he murmured. “Don’t worry. We’ll revise the plans, push them back, and bait a trap for them just in case they overheard where our next objective lies. But the telepath. Yes, he’ll be a problem.”  
  
  
  
When Shaw returned from Russia, he called Emma into his bedroom on the yacht. She draped herself across the doorway and watched him with diamond-hard eyes. “Yes?” she murmured.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he said, “I’m not in the mood for that today. I need your powers.”

She straightened and dusted off her immaculate white corset. She pursed her lips angrily; ever since Shaw had found out about that omega, he’d hardly been in her bed at all. He’d spoken, once, dreamily, of sending her along with Azazel and getting a psychic imprint of the bitch, and she’d known that he was picturing putting it to use in the bedroom, but for once, the mention of her powers in a sexual context didn’t excite her. She supposed that she should’ve expected it. Alphas wanted omegas, after all; she was hardly immune to the pull of sweet-perfumed skin and supple limbs and slick dripping from wet-open holes. She’d just thought they’d had something special.

“What would you like me to do?” she said, only a little grudgingly.

Shaw opened the larger of two black cases he’d placed on the bed and lifted from it a helmet, gleaming a dull dark metallic in the bright lights of the ship’s cabin and the sun reflecting off the bow outside. He settled it onto his head and grinned at her maniacally. “Read my mind,” he said softly.

She frowned and concentrated—Shaw’s telepathic walls were high and thick and stalwart—but when she reached for him, it was as though there was nothing there, just empty air. She blinked, trying to make the mirage dissolve, but he stayed there, grinning at her, growing smugger and smugger the more she floundered. “I… can’t,” she said, confused.

Shaw’s grin widened. “Excellent,” he said, and slipped off the helmet. “I had the Russians make it out of a specific alloy of cobalt. They’ve had a long tradition of experimentation with psychic warfare, long before we even knew it was a possibility. This will protect me from Xavier… and without his powers, he’s just a soft little academic unable to stand against me.”

“What’s in the other box?” Emma asked curiously.

This Shaw drew out with much more delicacy. It was a circlet made of the same dark-silvery material as the helmet, beautifully wrought, fine twining lines of metal twisting around into an intricate pattern that made her head swim. He placed it on his head and motioned for her to use her powers on him. She concentrated, but his mind was strangely slippery—she gained purchase on it with some difficulty, but it was faint at the edges of her mind, and she had a feeling that if she moved too far out of range she would lose him entirely. “What… what _is_ that?” she said, surprise spiking through her. If Shaw had felt like a corpse, like a Shaw-shaped mirage, when he’d been wearing the helmet, now he felt like… like a being of clear water rippling across from her, alien but present.

“It’s to keep telepathy out,” Shaw said, a smile playing around his lips. “And to keep the effects of telepathy _in._ ”

He removed the circlet and placed it back in the box, and it all rushed to Emma with a crushing certainty. “You’re going to use it on _him,_ ” she said. “You’re going to break his bond and then conceal his mind from his alpha with that _thing._ ”

“Yes,” Shaw said, smiling. “That’s step one, anyway.”  
  
  
  
Things fell into place with the driving force of destiny. Azazel tracked them from Granda to Madrid, Madrid to Dublin, Dublin to Bern, Bern to Warsaw, and reported dutifully on the trail of comatose and dead bodies they left in their wake, how they’d been cornered by Interpol at one time but the telepathic alpha had gotten them out of it, how they seemed _happy_ together in a way that only a rare few ever achieved. They played chess outside in parks and cafes, they kissed under awnings and in the rain, they wandered downstairs for breakfast every morning from their hotel room wearing sleepy and satisfied smiles. It made Shaw smile, a mean twist of the lips that spoke of the pleasure he would take in making them pay tenfold for each transgression against him.

Chloroform, the cobalt-steel coronet, and a concrete bunker hidden away in the depths of Warsaw. This was inevitable, inexorable, Shaw thought. Destined.  
  
  
  
Later—much later—Erik would hate himself for not knowing that something had been wrong sooner.

He wasn’t built for it, Charles had told him once, being prey, which was why he always made submission such a struggle, such a fight. “Lucky that I like it,” Charles had said, eyes sparkling, just when Erik had started to curl in on himself in shame. Erik knew what he meant, though, the way that he never thought of himself as something worthy of protection, which Charles grumbled about whenever he dressed Erik’s new wounds, whenever he pressed kisses to Erik’s temple when the nightmares woke him. His injuries were acceptable collateral damage; his nightmares the negligible by-product of necessary work. Prey defended itself at all costs, was paranoid and self-protective, and Erik… did not and was not. He was good enough to know when he was generally being followed, though he rarely cared; he’d meet whoever was following him in a dark alley someday, and they’d see who’d come off the better. Not good enough to know, however, when he was being stalked with intent.

He only noticed that something was wrong a mere hour before he was taken. He’d left Charles at the library and was strolling through the streets of Old Warsaw, giving a wide berth to the places of his childhood, just trying to get a sense of the city’s underground, who could point him to the forgers he would need to be able to cross into West Germany with Charles the day after tomorrow, the smugglers who would be able to get him a gun after he’d lost his own at the bottom of the Seine last week, the informants who could tell him where Sebastian Shaw had traveled next, after he’d met with a red-skinned man who’d been living in the Russian Quarter for more decades than anyone could count and spirited him away the way he had with Charles’s sister.

There was a thrill of danger to it—he’d spent years hyperaware of being an omega when walking the streets, and there was still some threat to it, but his mutation and the ring around his finger even more so protected him. He didn’t need Charles to hover like a shadow over his life, trying to defend him from evils Erik knew far better than he did, but still… his shadow was nice, the way it fell over Erik and cast him within a blanket of safety. The way his mated scent screamed that if someone fucked with him, they’d have an angry alpha ready to tear their throat out, no matter how promiscuous it was for an omega to walk alone at night.

In so many ways, Charles had made his life so much _better._ His company, his distractions when the dark thoughts leaked into Erik’s mind. His sheer beloved presence. A warm arm over his shoulder when he woke in the middle of the night, dark thoughts plaguing him; a ready ear when the things he needed to say, the memories that had been shoved so far down for so long, surfaced; a smile. Charles’s smile brightened Erik’s whole world, as cliche as it seemed; it surprised him, sometimes, when he walked outside and it was gray or rainy, because it seemed to him that sunlight had been pouring from the windows just moments before, when Charles had smiled at him and kissed him good-morning.

He’d been thinking about how Charles was… _extraordinary,_ with such power that he only ever bent toward idle flirtatious games and the service of finding his sister and Sebastian Shaw, an alpha who had seen a broken omega instead of something to fuck and discard as something to cherish and rebuild, when he turned into an alley—

—and a crack of sulfur caused him to spin around and catch a glimpse of the red-skinned man he’d been pursuing all this time—

—he reached for the metal of the trash cans around them but the red-skinned man had a hand to his mouth and he was breathing in the heavy pungent scent of chloroform, and panic spiked through him— _Charles_ , his mind screamed out—with a clatter the garbage cans fell back to the floor, and darkness swam through his vision. He stumbled backwards, and his swaying motion turned into a fall; someone caught him, strong arms tipping his head back, and then _that voice_ , that voice he’d had nightmares about, that voice he wasn’t ready to confront, not really, murmured, “Ah, _schatz,_ still so careless,” and he tipped headfirst into the darkness with inexpressible horror weighing on every muscle, every bone.  
  
  
  
When he opened his eyes it was as though only a heartbeat of panic had passed. He came to face-down on a cold concrete slab and tried to push himself up, but his wrists were tied behind his back with something he couldn’t feel—rope—he lashed out with his legs but dark laughter lit the air as he hit nothing. Then, a hand, inhumanly strong, pressed against his right ankle, and in spite of himself he whimpered as he tried to break free—what on earth— _nothing_ was that strong, save metal, and the pressure increased until he was crying out through the gag in his mouth, and it finally let up as a shadow drifted over him and came to stand in his line of sight.

Sebastian Shaw.

On instinct Erik reached out to every scrap of metal in the area and—nothing.

“You’ll find me a little harder to kill than my associates, _schatz_ ,” Shaw said, smiling. “In more ways than one. For example, I know what you can do, and took… precautions.”

 _Horror_ was too frivolous a word to describe what was dawning on him at that moment. Erik threw himself against his range, and he could distantly feel metal around him, but not close enough to manipulate, only enough to hang, tantalizingly, out of reach—like his salvation, if he were only a little bit stronger, only a little bit better. He screamed against the gag that had been stuffed in his mouth as Shaw came closer, and threw his mind against the silence in his head, calling for Charles, calling for _anyone_ , but especially Charles, to come and save him from the monster that had haunted his dreams, he was a child again and helpless and stripped down to his bare instincts.

“He’s calling for his mate,” a woman’s voice said, and in his mind Charles’s absence rang out like a mirrored wall of glittering diamond.

“Hm.” Shaw ran a hand over Erik’s flank, greedily, possessively. Erik screamed again. “We’ll soon fix that. But first, Erik, dear, I wanted to let you know—while you’re still in full possession of your faculties—what’s going to happen to you.” He leaned close. His breath, cold with spearmint, brushed against Erik’s face and Erik tried to cringe away. He wasn’t ready for this. All these years, and he’d never pictured anything like this—a world where Shaw had the upper hand, _again_ , a world where he was alone, without his mate backing him up, a world where he was tied down and pinned to a concrete slab like a lamb for the slaughter. He was _afraid_ , and all his composure had fled him. “I was so— _delighted_ when I found out that the person killing my associates was you, _schatz_. I always regretted leaving you behind, you know. I admit, in my weaker moments, I pictured you by my side as we built a new world order for people like us. My perfect weapon. My beautiful monster.”

 _People like us._ Erik stilled.

Shaw chuckled. “Oh, yes, Erik. You never knew, did you? You never even stopped to consider why I might be recruiting people like you, like _Charles’s_ charming sister—oh, that got a reaction out of you, didn’t it?” Erik had thrown himself against his bonds at Charles’s name slipping out of that _serpent’s_ mouth, a ferocious anger, different from the cold rage that had fueled him for so long, protective and hot, flaring through him and momentarily eclipsing the fear. “Yes, Erik. We’re the same, you and I. Well. I’m a fair bit stronger than you, even as magnificent a creature as you’ve become. Would you like a demonstration?”

He climbed onto the slab next to Erik and straddled him, his fingers pressing lightly against Erik’s bound wrists. And then—the pressure there increased, until it felt like Shaw had his whole weight against Erik’s hands—and yet the impression of lightness still remained—and then harder, more solid, until pain flared in his wrists, until Erik screamed, and then with an almighty _crack_ his wrist fractured from the pressure Shaw was applying, the bones parting around his grip like his fingers were made of concrete, of titanium, something heavy and immovable, and Erik screamed less because of the pain—he’d had worse pain than a broken wrist—and more because he was here, _again,_ on a slab at a madman’s mercy, and even the thing he’d clung to when Charles talked about a future together, a society of people like them and Charles’s Raven, had been revealed for the naive lie it was. There were monsters, too, even in their new species. There was Sebastian Shaw.

“Shh, shh,” Shaw soothed over Erik’s sobs. “It’s all right, _schatz._ Just a little punishment, you remember punishment, don’t you? for spreading your legs for any smart-mouthed little alpha that would have you, for not waiting for me like you should have, like you were always meant to.” Slowly, slowly, the words sunk in. Erik’s tears felt very cold on his face as he blanched. “Such a delight, seeing you again. The first mutant omega I’ve ever encountered, and it was you. It was you all along. We were… destined, for this moment, you see?” He ran his fingers up Erik’s thigh and slipped them into his waistband, just stroking the line of his hipbone. Erik shuddered and tried to squirm away, but Shaw tightened his grip on his hip and yanked him closer with his supernatural strength. “Oh, I know you’re unwilling now. But we’ll fix that, too.”

 _Never_ , Erik thought fiercely.

“He’s thinking that you’re too late. That you can rape him, but his heart and body belongs to someone else,” the woman said, and it was so—it was so like Charles’s abstracted tone when they were interrogating someone, half his attention on listening and half on what he was actually saying, that chills went down Erik’s spine. “Yes, honey, I’m a telepath, too,” the woman said, stepping closer to him. In the dim light, all he could see was the impression of fine blond hair and diamond-cut blue eyes. “All that time with Xavier, that means you should know what I can do.”

“Oh, Erik,” Shaw smiled. “Don’t you know that I never settle for half-measures? Emma?” He stepped aside, and the woman drew closer, and put her hands on Erik’s temple. He thrashed, horribly aware of how skin-contact amplified a psychic’s power, and behind him Shaw was saying, “Emma here has been experimenting, you see, with bonds and what a telepath can do to them. Now, I could just kill Xavier, I admit.”

“He’s thinking that he’s too strong for you,” the woman—Emma—said. “He’s a telepath. He would freeze you where you stood and put a bullet in your brain.”

“Well,” Shaw said pleasantly, “I have a telepath, too. And, as you can see, I’m rather good at getting the better of mutants who like to delude themselves into thinking that they’re strong. Maybe I’d send his sister. Would he read her mind? Or would he be too grateful to see her again that she could bury a blade in his heart without a hint of suspicion from him?”

Erik snarled and jerked out of Emma’s grip, and _pulled_ —but no metal came to his aid. Emma laughed, a tinkling sound that managed to be harsh all at once. She smelled like alpha, like the pungent tang of citrus and elderberry, but also like Shaw, and Erik tried not to retch. “He’s trying to kill you,” she reported.

“Oh, my dear,” Shaw sighed. “You don’t have to worry. I thought about killing him, and taking you over his cooling corpse, I won’t lie. But this—what I have planned—is so much more delicious. You see, Emma has been experimenting—”

Without warning, she plunged into his mind and Erik screamed against his own determination to remain stoic, it _hurt_ , it hurt like Charles’s telepathy had never had, like a diamond dagger digging behind his eyes, and he ran out of breath to scream as Emma found the shining golden thread that wound between himself and Charles and tugged, and the pain that flared in him made him panic, the hollowness it inspired in him for a brief, terrible moment made him think of the way alphas and omegas had described the bond breaking with their partner’s death, and for a terrible moment he _knew_ that Charles was dead before the bond snapped back into place.

“—with _breaking_ bonds.”

But Emma dug harder, and it felt like something fundamental was being uprooted from his mind, and tears swam in Erik’s eyes as the bond _stretched_ , so strong but pushed to a breaking point, and splintered, like someone yanking a deeply-rooted weed out of the ground, he could feel the breaking roots in his mind, he could feel the agony as it was pulled out of his mind, he could feel, at last, the horrible silence in his head that he’d never been aware of before, the terrible, utter certainty that Charles was gone, that for this silence to be so complete he had to be somewhere Erik could never reach him, and he wept, and he wept, and Shaw rubbed the tears away and crooned, “See? I’ll make it better.”  
  
  
  
Charles tore down the Warsaw street, heart in his throat, jumping the places where the cobbles jumbled together, trying frantically to track Erik. Their bond didn’t work like that—maybe other alphas and omegas could find each other when they were near, but Charles’s telepathy had amplified that feeling, so that it was as though Erik were breathing over his shoulder even when he was half a city away—but he could do it the old-fashioned way, he could trace Erik’s steps and _find him_ , find him and make whatever what was causing his heart to pound with panic to _stop_.

He elbowed his way through the cafe where they’d parted ways, then down the streets; he knew Erik’s mind inside and out, knew what routes he would take, the way he would instinctively gravitate toward the most dangerous parts of the city in order to better take the measure of their enemies, knew that he would almost without thought avoid the parts that reminded him of his past. Down one street and up another, searching for anything, some scent—reduced to base tracking instinct, his alpha’s nose and intuition, for all his telepathy was helpless, helpless to tell him anything except that his omega was _afraid_ , so afraid, terror-struck in a way that no one ever should be, much less _Erik_ , Erik who was so strong and good, and oddly muted in a way he’d never experienced before. Distance, he thought. Whoever had taken Erik had taken him far away, and Charles’s stomach churned, because he’d gotten better at this hunting stuff but how was he supposed to _find_ him—

—and yet how could he not? Erik was _counting_ on him—Optimism, Erik would have scoffed, but in truth the alternative wasn’t simply pessimism but unbearable agony, to leave Erik alone with his thoughts and his fear, so he would find him, he would. If it was the last thing he did, he would rescue Erik from that terror.

He turned down an alley that opened onto the Poniatowski bridge, which shimmer with light in the dusk. And then he caught it. Erik’s scent, sharp with terror, nearly as sharp as the throbbing fear in his mind.

He turned on the spot, searching for clues, for a scent trail, but—nothing. It was as though he’d been there, then he’d been gone. Had they found some way to disguise his scent—? Chills racked his spine. Had they been so determined to stop Charles from coming after him—?

A flash of color caught his attention, and numbly, he stepped toward the bridge. Swept around one of the railings was a scrap of blue, dyed crimson with blood. Hands shaking, he lifted it up, and scented it—it smelled immediately, terribly, of Erik, and also of injury, of the thick, coppery evidence that someone had tried to hurt him and succeeded. It was the scarf Erik had been wearing that day. A gift from Charles, one of the few he had accepted because it was becoming colder, and he mistakenly thought that Charles’s “frivolous attitude toward money” had made a rare turn toward the practical, when really Charles had just wanted to see whether the blue would make the blue of Erik’s eyes stand out more, or bring out the green or the gray instead.

He looked toward the rippling darkness of the Vistula below and wanted to scream.

Wouldn’t someone have noticed—if someone had fallen in—? He shook it off. No time to debate, he had to find an authority, they had to dredge the river—

—and then pain seared through him and made the whole thing pointless anyway. Charles screamed at the sudden emptiness in his mind, the space where there had been someone and now there was no longer—his end of the bond flailed helplessly in space, seeking something that was no longer there, then curled in on itself, battered and tattered. His hands clawed at the scarf, as though he could pull Erik back to him with sheer force of will, but he knew what it meant, the pain in his head, the agony lancing through his heart, the way he had already begun to stink of widower. Every alpha did—it was the pain of their mate, their other half, being _ripped_ from them and from the world, always violent, always terrible, no matter if it took place at age 23 or 93, it was the worst thing the natural world could do to them, fill them with this biological grief that almost superseded the emotional grief.

Charles fell onto his knees, already weeping, already lost in the bone-deep knowledge that his omega, who he’d held for so brief a time, whose life he’d never got to make better the way he’d always sworn he would, who he’d never introduced to Raven, his _Erik_ , was dead.  
  
  
  
Over the next few hours, Shaw barely gloated at all. Erik’s sniffles died down after a while, though tears continued to silently pour down his face; he could taste them around the gag, and he was glad, because it brought him back to reality, reminded him that Shaw and his telepath had just played a dirty trick on him, that Charles was alive, _Charles was alive_ , he had to believe that, no matter what his body was telling him, Charles was alive. Slowly reality drained back in on him. He was an omega without—without an alpha, at least for now, and Sebastian Shaw was standing there, slowly tracing figures across his ankle where he’d pushed his sock down and taken off his shoes.

He had to get out of here. He had to find Charles, and tell him that he was alive, and drag him to bed so that Charles could renew the mark and they could find a way to never let this happen again—

Except as his strength returned, so did a terrible, familiar heat prickling across his skin. He’d lost track of time, but at some point, Shaw laughed softly and leaned down to his ear, hand stroking down his side possessively. “Do you feel that, Erik? It’s your body, readying itself for another alpha. Your widow’s heat, when it signals to any alpha it can find how ripe and ready you are for the taking. In less than an hour you’ll be in full heat, and then you’ll be mine. And _Charles Xavier_ ,” he spat, “won’t be able to save you.”

Erik jerked in his bonds, refusing to let despair settle across his shoulders. So he had less than an hour to escape. He could—he could—

He reached for the metal far above him and _yanked_ , but it refused to heed his call any better than it had before. He closed his eyes and refused to give Shaw anything more than a shuddering breath. He had time. He would escape this. He had time.

Until he didn’t.

Until he was soaking through his trousers and screaming internally at his body which had betrayed him so. Until Shaw had leisurely, almost gently, like he’d made his point with the broken wrist, taken another two lengths of rope and bound Erik’s ankles to his upper thighs, leaving him helpless and squirming and humiliated and unable to get any leverage. Until Shaw took a knife and ran it, clearly savoring each inch of bared skin, through the seams of his clothes, until he was shivering naked on the concrete slab and Shaw was swiping his fingers through the slick gathering at his hole and tasting it.

“Delectable,” he sighed, and Erik thrashed as best he could, but Shaw simply placed a steadying hand at the small of his back and applied that superhuman pressure to still him.

“I know this is hard for you,” he said with faux-sympathy. “I admit, I want to see you fight. A little, anyway. But that’s a poor basis for a relationship—for the kind of relationship we’ll do great things with—so Emma will help you. Ease the pain, a little.”

Erik snarled through his gag, not that it made any difference. Shaw straddled him and hitched up his hips. Unzipped his trousers. Pressed the blunt head of his cock to Erik’s entrance.

God, he was so _hot_.

Charles. He wanted Charles.

And then Shaw was _inside him,_ and it was—

Erik shook with rage, helplessly, impaled as he was on another alpha’s cock, feeling the bastard move inside him, slowly at first, then with greater urgency. And it felt _good_ , helplessly, _mindlessly_ good, like having an itch scratched by a mosquito. His body didn’t care who Shaw was, that he’d ruined his life, had killed his mother and then snatched his mate away from him, his body just knew that hot precum was smearing against the slick of his walls and he was being stretched—painfully—Shaw hadn’t prepared him at all—but even the pain was good, even though the goodness of it made Erik want to violently retch.

Shaw yanked back on the rope around his wrists like reins, and Erik screamed with fury and tried to buck him off, but his struggles only deepened Shaw’s moans as he he continued to plunge into his wet heat. Erik put his head against the cool of the concrete slab and focused, pointedly, on nothing. Let Shaw have his body. He never cared much for it anyway. _Charles,_ he thought, trying desperately not to connect that name, that beloved name, with what was going on in that moment, but wanting the comfort of his mate, his _true_ mate, no matter what Shaw did to him, more than anything on the planet at that moment, even more than Shaw’s gruesome and bloody death. _Charles,_ he thought, even knowing that not even Charles could hear him. _Charles, I love you. I love you. Come find me. I love you._

And then Emma seized his head in her long-nailed hands and pressed back inside—

—It was difficult to say how he realized what was happening. He was so focused on Charles that when pieces of him began to peel away, he noticed immediately. He blinked, and realized he couldn’t remember what Charles’s smile looked like, that comforting smile that told him that everything was going to be okay, the one that almost made him believe it because _Charles_ so clearly believed it, and the arrogant bastard would make it so. He blinked again, and Charles’s eyes—blue? brown?—faded from his grasp.

He blinked again, and the memory of Charles moving inside him, the first time he’d experienced sex with actual pleasure instead of the unwilling products of friction and heat—vanished.

“No,” he tried to say through his gag. “No, _no!”_ But mercilessly, brutally, Emma stripped away his last defense against Shaw—his mind—flaying away the bits of Charles that had rubbed off on him, digging her fingers into the rind of his memory of the last two years and peeling it off like the skin of a orange, juice and blood bursting on her fingers, pungent and sharp. He struggled against her, tried with all his strength to cling to the memories, but they turned to water within his grasp, they turned to falling sand and ash.

Between thrusts, Shaw gasped into his ear, “It won’t just be _him,_ you know. By the time she’s done, Emma will have made you forget the camps. Forget your mother. Forget everything but me. You will be… my perfect slave. My pretty, brainless omega. The perfect consort for the leader of the new world… so powerful yet so powerless. You will be mine, Erik, in every way imaginable.” He breathed out a laugh. “You can fight it if you want. It makes you tighter.”

He tried to wrest his head from her grasp, but he was pinned between Shaw and Emma, between a rock and a hard place, between a thick cock plowing into him and cold hands stripping his identity away from him. He clung to his hatred, purer and stronger than any emotion he’d ever felt in his life, save one, still save one. He clung to the memories Charles had unearthed, of his mother’s smile, of his mother’s laugh. He clung to Charles.

But it all, eventually, fell away into darkness, until—

The omega gasped on the concrete slab as he was taken. Distantly, he could feel the call of metal many stories above him—even more distantly, he could feel the tickle of a mind not his own, which winked out before his eyes—but his whole mind, his whole being, was consumed with the hot, pulsing cock inside of him, slaking his heat, quenching his terrible thirst. He writhed mindlessly on that cock, hearing laughter above him and not quite sure why; he clenched down, trying to keep it within him, even as the knot at the base of the cock swelled and made it more difficult to withdraw and thrust back inside. He squirmed as lips brushed against his bonding mark, which was strangely tender.

The alpha’s hips stuttered now as he continued to shove inside, the thickness of his knot catching and slowing his thrusts, and the omega mewled at the feeling of the knot at his ass. He tried to relax open for it, but the alpha seemed determined to fuck into him as long as possible, and it was beginning to hurt—a good pain, though. The omega scented blood, and even that was good, even that was evidence of how much he was wanted by the alpha whose hand was strong and unyielding in the small of his back, fingers tangled in the rope around his wrists. Finally, finally, the knot popped inside and would not dislodge again, no matter how the alpha, laughing, pulled back; the omega squealed as he was yanked backwards with him, scrabbling for purchase that was not forthcoming on the plain concrete slab he was being fucked on, a squeal which turned into a gasp and then a moan as teeth found his bonding mark and _bit._

“Mine,” the alpha snarled as he spurted inside of him, and the omega could feel the fullness as he was pumped full of seed, made whole by the alpha. He sobbed with gratitude. Slowly, the rocking of the alpha’s hips died down, and, a second or an eternity later, the alpha’s cock slid free as the knot went down. The omega could feel mingled slick and come trickling from his cunt, and clenched to keep it inside of him. “Good boy,” the alpha crooned, and the omega trembled with pleasure.

The alpha dragged his hand down the omega’s bare back, soothing, gentling, and gradually the omega settled. With a sigh, the alpha heaved himself off the concrete slab and knelt in front of the omega, undoing the omega’s gag. “What are you?” the alpha purred.

“Yours,” the omega gasped, “yours, yours, yours.”  
  
  
  
Shaw kept the omega in that bunker for the rest of his heat. Emma stayed with them both, every now and then renewing the layers of submission and memory-suppression she’d laid over the omega’s mind, mostly watching them fuck and trying, as Shaw had crooned to her before they’d descended into the bunker, not to be too jealous; she wasn’t mate material, after all. For all Shaw’s talk about the perfect mate, the ideal right hand for his new world order, _she_ was his general, she was his trusted left hand. She knew her place, and it was above this mewling bitch. 

When the heat passed, Shaw fucked the omega— _Erik,_ she supposed she should get used to calling him—one last time and then helped him stand, his broken wrist cradled to his chest, his legs wobbly from having been fucked so thoroughly. Emma laid out a suit, not unlike the one the omega had been wearing when they’d taken him, on the concrete slab where the omega had spent the last few days sobbing and sweating and begging for cock. “Wait,” Shaw said, and flashed something between his fingers. The omega’s wedding band.

Something flared in the omega’s eyes, briefly. Emma stirred, ready to jump into action, but Shaw waved her down, and it passed soon enough. Shaw held up the band to the light. “Do you know what this is, _schatz?_ ”

The omega shook his head slowly, his eyes fixed not on the ring but on Shaw. As it should be.

“Good,” Shaw said, and pressed the ring into Erik’s palm. “Melt it for me, would you?”

Erik stared at it for a long moment, then closed his hand on it. When he opened it, a silvery lump of metal gleamed in his palm. Shaw beamed at him and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Good,” he said. “Very good. Come on, Erik. The rest of our lives await.”

Before they left the bunker, Shaw crowned Erik with the circlet of cobalt and steel.  
  
  
  
“How,” Shaw said dangerously, “is that possible? He had a heat with me.”

“Grieving heat is different from normal heat,” the doctor said apologetically. Light from the blinds danced across his face, casting an incongruously cheerful haze over Shaw’s desk and the sweating doctor sitting across from him. “He must’ve gotten pregnant during the last heat he shared with the, ah, deceased alpha. It is _possible_ for the hormonal rush experienced during a grieving heat to cause someone to miscarry, but it is also not unheard of for the pregnancy to survive it.”

Shaw stood up abruptly and stormed out. Emma smiled sweetly at the doctor. “Can I show you out?”  
  
  
  
Shaw found Erik curled up in a corner of their bunk on the ship. His knees were drawn to his chest, and he looked very small; he resembled more the child Shaw once knew than the fighter and assassin he’d become. He glanced at Shaw out of the corners of his eyes as he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and ran a hand down Erik’s back, comforting and possessive.

“How can I be pregnant?” he whispered, the fear clear in his voice.

Shaw pursed his lips and his grip tightened on Erik’s shoulder. Erik winced, but obediently didn’t move. “There was an alpha,” Shaw said darkly. “He tried to take you away from me. His name is Charles Xavier.”

“Charles Xavier,” Erik repeated, almost dreamlike, almost as though he were tasting the words on his tongue. Shaw slapped him.

“Remember that name,” Shaw hissed, running his hand from Erik’s cheek to his throat, grasping him by the neck and drawing him close. “Remember that he almost took you from me. Remember that you are _mine_ , above all else.”

“I—I don’t,” Erik stuttered. “I don’t remember him. I’m sorry, alpha, I don’t remember.”

Shaw released him and ran a steadying hand through his hair. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You will.”

In the few weeks since he’d taken Erik, Emma had sat with him every night, weaving the conditioning deeper and deeper into his mind. The result was that Erik now relaxed under his touch, though an uneasy expression crossed his face as he did it. Shaw wasn’t quite sure what to do about that—whether to have Emma smooth out all the kinks, or to relish the way in which Erik was still himself underneath all of the brainwashing and mind games, to know that a part of him was still screaming whenever Shaw touched him. Shaw kissed him, possessively, sweeping his tongue boldly into Erik’s mouth, and Erik melted underneath him, his hands fluttering up to keep Shaw there. He made a tiny, shuddering sound that was almost a moan into Shaw’s mouth, and Shaw tightened his grip on the back of Erik’s neck, dragging him into the kiss, devouring him until Erik was trying to pull away to gasp for air and then keeping it going for a little longer just for fun. 

Erik met his eyes and then glanced down, shyly almost. He stared at his stomach, still flat, and caressed a hand across a belly that might stretch and swell with child over the coming months, the bastard seed of his former alpha. “What about,” he murmured, “the baby?”

Sebastian took both Erik’s wrists in one hand and, with a swift movement, pinned them above his head. “Oh, don’t worry, he murmured,” and pressed a hand that was already growing hot with absorbed energy into Erik’s stomach. “I’ll take care of that too.”  
  
  
  
The doctor flinched as screams began to echo through the halls of the yacht, making a half-aborted motion to turn around and see who was making that terrible noise. Emma turned her grip on his shoulder to diamond and smiled at him. “Don’t worry,” she said, “he won’t remember. And neither will you.”  
  
  
  
Shaw’s demands for Emma were many and complex, but she had time and talent. Circumvent the rage he’d nursed against Shaw his entire life. Make him forget the bond he had with his former alpha, Xavier. Fundamentally alter his personality—make him docile and sweet, not angry and rebellious. Program in obedience, loyalty, love. Associate pain with pleasure, make him bend to Shaw’s desires. As much a slut to Shaw’s sadistic impulses as Emma had been.

Every evening, she beckoned to the omega, who laid his head in her lap as she worked, and dove back into the thickly-woven layers of programming and conditioning and memory-work that she’d made out of his head. She’d built structures in his mind, slides for his thoughts to skate past on instead of getting mired in triggered memories, locked doors behind which the darkest monsters and brightest happinesses of his life were barred. He was vaguely aware of a past life in which he knew Shaw, but when he tried to focus on the memories, they slipped out of his grasp. His mother and his former alpha he didn’t remember at all.

She plastered layer over layer in Erik’s mind, building from foundation to crenelation, like a fortress made out of papier-mâché. She stacked lies on top of false beliefs on top of gaping wounds, so that anyone trying to pull apart her work, whether Erik or another telepath, would be caught and strangled in the traps she set. She bent and reshaped Erik’s mind into a different instrument altogether, one that was only capable of playing the tune that Shaw and Emma fed him with.

“He saved you,” she told him often. “He saved all of us. He rescued you from the death camps and gave you a purpose. You owe him your life, your loyalty, everything. You love him.” She pressed her own feelings—of life, of loyalty, of love—into Erik’s mind and watched as he shuddered, the remnants of his former self briefly struggling before accepting what she was telling him. And she told him these things often enough that eventually, as with all things, he began to believe it, even if he couldn’t remember it himself.  
  
  
  
Raven first met Shaw’s omega when she was reporting back to him after a successful infiltration mission. She waited on the sun deck, sunning herself and vaguely envious of the others, who got to live here or in another one of Shaw’s luxurious properties year-round. Azazel, who had been giving her little presents, joined her for breakfast, as did his sullen shadow, Janos. Emma was somewhere else—no doubt lying in—and Shaw was the last of their party to join them.

Azazel pointedly looked at the empty hall Shaw had just passed through. “Your little love not joining us this morning, then?”

“He’s sleeping in,” Shaw said. “We won’t see him until after lunch… if then.” He smirked at Azazel, who let out a raspy laugh. Raven looked from one to the other.

Janos leaned forward and informed her quietly, “Sebastian’s taken a mate.”

Her stomach knotted slightly. She didn’t like the jocular possessiveness with which alphas like Shaw and Azazel spoke about their omegas and beta women, like they were possessions whose only impressive achievement was how hard they could handle being fucked. (Charles, she remembered, had never been like that; he’d been a typical omegas’ man, but when she’d asked him for details, he’d always smiled coyly and mimed zipping his lips shut.) Still, Shaw was her boss. “Congratulations,” she offered. “What’s his name?”

“Erik,” Shaw said, eyeing her speculatively. “And I think… yes. You should meet him. When he’s not so… worn-out, perhaps.” Azazel laughed again, and Shaw settled at the breakfast table with the rest of them, popping a slice of pineapple into his mouth. “Stay for the rest of the day, Raven. I’ll introduce you.”

His omega, Erik, did end up coming down around lunchtime. He was tall for an omega, but slim, and standing next to Shaw they made a handsome couple, Erik capable of being tucked right under Shaw’s chin. He was wearing a shirt that was slightly too big for him—one of Shaw’s, Raven recognized the print—and a darkly gleaming coronet that rested in his hair. He blinked, wide-eyed, at her, and conflicting emotions filled his eyes—she winced, ready to be ostracized once more for her coloring, and wondered whether she shouldn’t have worn her human guise for this meeting—but they smoothed out soon enough and he nodded at her. The movement made the collar of his shirt slip a little, and she caught sight of dark, ravenous love-bites peppering up the column of his throat.

“I’m Raven,” she said. The way Erik couldn’t meet her eyes. It wasn’t disgust, it was something else—fear. She gentled her voice. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

“And you,” Erik murmured, hiding behind Shaw a little.

Shaw ran his fingers through Erik’s hair, adjusted the coronet that he was wearing in lieu of a collar or ring. “Erik is like us, Raven dear. Show her,” he commanded.

Erik raised his hands and the forks floated up and did a little jig. Raven smiled encouragingly at him; he snuck a glance at her and looked down immediately. “Your skin is lovely,” he said shyly.

Shaw’s grip on Erik’s shoulder tightened perceptibly, but Raven scowled at him—he probably just didn’t want his mate to offend one of his lieutenants, but she could take care of herself, thank you very much—and smiled at him encouragingly. “Thank you,” she said, flattered. “How long have you been mated?”

“Four months,” Shaw answered for him. 

“I’m not around very often,” she told Erik by way of explanation. “Sebastian sends me on infiltration missions because of what I can do.” In demonstration she shifted to her usual human form, and watched with delight as Erik blinked then smiled, quickly, fleetingly, but real.

“Marvelous,” he murmured, and if he weren’t mated to the most terrifying man she knew, she might have kissed him.  
  
  
  
“Sebastian rescued him,” Azazel told her later. “Abusive alpha, cowering mutant mate, you know how it goes. Doesn’t like to be touched. Don’t take it personally if he cringes away from you.” But Erik seemed to view her with a bright curiosity that was only sometimes eclipsed by the way he hid away from everyone, and which made Shaw jealous, if the way the dark bruises on Erik’s throat grew darker and more prominent whenever she was around. He’d hopefully brought her a chess set once, and she’d shaken her head but smiled at him, remembering long nights of her once-brother badgering her into playing chess with him, though he always won. She wondered if they’d have gotten along, Erik and her brother.

She’d never know—Charles had chosen assimilation and hiding instead of pride in himself and what they could do. Easy when you looked like he did. Not so easy for those like her and Azazel.

The next time she saw Erik, over a year later, he didn’t smile at her. He looked thin and haggard, slumping down the stairs for a bowl of oatmeal well after noon, rings circling his eyes, looking even smaller in Shaw’s clothing than he had when she’d first met him. She looked at Janos questioningly, and he shrugged. It was Emma who answered her, her eyes glinting sharp and cold over the newspaper she was fingering. “Miscarriage,” she said softly, and Raven could hear a note of sympathy in her voice, the first gleaming of softness she’d ever sensed from Emma. “This is the third. Sebastian is getting impatient.”  
  
  
  
Emma brought Shaw the news that Colonel Hendry had agreed to the meet at the Club herself; she knew how eagerly he’d been anticipating a response. She knocked on the door of the boss’s cabin, and when she got no response, pushed the door open.

Shaw was fucking his omega. He was knelt over him, one hand canting the omega’s hips up and spreading his ass wide, the other pressing his face into the mattress. He grinned wildly at Emma as she leaned against the doorsill, his hips never slowing, plowing into the omega who lay docilely and obediently on their marriage bed. “News, my dear?” he said, between pants. Emma surveyed the long line of his body and tried to ignore the omega jerking and writhing a little, almost as though in spite of himself, with every thrust underneath him.

“Hendry will meet you at the Club. Should I recall Raven, send her along to start laying the groundwork in Russia?”

“No,” Shaw panted. He adjusted his grip, bringing one hand down to trace around where the rim of Erik’s cunt was stretched around his cock. He pushed a long finger in alongside his cock and his swelling knot, feeling along the swollen slickness of the omega’s entrance, loosening him even further in tiny increments. Now free, Erik turned his head to look at her. His eyes were flat and emotionless. “No, keep her where she is, for now. I don’t trust Hendry. After the meet, have her report back on his actions, see if he has any contingency plans put in place when he meets us again.”

“He’s not smart enough for that,” Emma protested.

“Perhaps not— _aaah_ , that’s good.” Shaw slapped Erik’s buttock as he convulsed around his cock and knot, rubbing a thumb roughly over where they were joined. “Still, we didn’t get this far by playing it fast and loose. Keep her where she is.”

Emma nodded, cast one last glance over the tableau—the omega, spread over Shaw’s thighs and pinned by his cock, sopping wet, leaking slick onto his skin, the swollen pink and tender pleats of his hole distorted by the knot lodged inside him. His trembling limbs, the high color in his face and suffusing down his shoulders and chest, the way he closed his eyes and flinched as Sebastian leaned down to murmur an endearment— _schatz_ or _sweetheart_ or perhaps _my little cockslut_ —against his sloping cheekbone. Beautiful, she thought, and for a moment, barely begrudged him at all. Then she closed the door, leaving the lovers to their passion, thinking idly that she hadn’t refreshed Erik’s conditioning for a long time, and that perhaps they were overdue.  
  
  
  
And Charles—  
  
  
  
Charles wasn’t actually sure whether he ever managed to contact the authorities to dredge the Vistula for Erik’s—for Erik. That evening passed in flashes. Screaming, leaning half over the railing into the river, scarf clenched in one hand, his mouth making noises that didn’t sound like Erik’s name but also didn’t sound like any word at all, strangers’ hands grabbing at his clothes and pulling him back. The hospital, white strangers in white crisp uniforms passing by him, patting gently at his shoulder, while he strained futilely against the leather bands holding him down. A doctor, telling him, gently, the way they taught them to do it in medical schools, that it seemed his mate was dead, that it seemed as though he was suffering from separation sickness. Separation sickness. So mild a term to describe the gripping, awful feeling of being cleaved from a part of yourself.

Finding out that the pills they gave you for separation sickness briefly made his mind stop screaming.

He stumbled out of the hospital half-deaf, hearing only with his ears instead of his mind, the place in his head where Erik had lived numbed and more silent than anyone else, haunting music halls and bars, more bars than music halls after a while. He drank his way through Warsaw. He drank his way through Kraków. He drank his way through Budapest. He was not trying to escape ghosts; he was looking for them. He slept in a pile of Erik’s clothes, he slept trying desperately to see whether his powers would prove conducive to lucid dreaming, he ate and drank and slept for sustenance and to see the ghost of Erik again. He sat down next to a street performer with a viola and just listened, lost in the notes and melodies until the performer pressed a fistful of notes into his hand and told him, kindly, to go get something to eat. 

He’d failed him. All that nonsense about protecting him, about making sure that Erik would never be more vulnerable as an omega than he would have been as a beta, and he couldn’t even do the most basic thing: stop Erik from getting knifed and thrown into the river. Did it matter whether it had been a Nazi who’d tracked them down or a mobster who just took exception to Erik’s methods? Did it matter if someone might be coming after him to tie up loose ends? He thought he was beyond revenge, beyond self-preservation. Nothing had ever felt like this. Not losing his father, not losing his mother, not losing his sister. Nothing had ever made him feel so _alone._

He understood, at last, why you might rend your clothes and cover the mirrors in the wake of a loss. Why you might not want to see yourself. See the person who had failed the one you loved so entirely.  
  
  
  
And he might have stayed like that forever had it not been for Jan Sperling.

Erik had had a photograph of Jan Sperling. Jan Sperling had been the go-between for the camp _kommandants,_ and a confidante of Shaw’s. Tracking down Sperling had been the next vague step on Erik’s vague map of how to narrow the net of his contacts down to Shaw. Charles had been trudging down the streets of Budapest, sober for a rare chance and wishing that he wasn’t, when he bumped into a man that he immediately recognized and on instinct froze him.

It was the first time he’d been able to do that without a finger to his temple.

He thought of Erik. Of Erik’s patient tutelage. Of the way that Erik had been stronger than him; the way that Charles had no doubt that even if Erik had lost him, he would have gone on, exacting his revenge tenfold on the men who had taken Charles from him. He looked at this man, who had once kicked a starving child-Erik in the ribs, which Erik had told him casually, just one more fact in the recitation of his intel about Jan Sperling, as though it hadn’t mattered at all—he looked at this man, who had killed so many and stood by and been complicit as _so many, many more_ were herded into the gas chambers to be murdered en masse—he looked at him, rage filling him, and the rage, at last, let him see the ghost he was looking for. When fury swelled in him like a blood blister, it was almost as though he could hear the thrumming pulse of Erik’s anger again, it was though _Erik’s_ anger was what was filling him.

Charles drew the blade that Erik had given him for his twenty-sixth birthday—the blade that Erik had crafted himself—and drove it upward into Jan Sperling’s skull.

When Sperling collapsed, people began to hover, but Charles banished them with a thought. He stepped over Sperling’s body and began to make his way back to the hotel. His head pounded with sobriety and the expenditure of effort to make everyone on that street forget that anything had ever happened, but for the first time in a long time, blood rushed through his veins instead of despair, and he could almost convince himself that he was returning home to Erik.

That night, he dreamed of Erik, who smiled at him and kissed him and looked on the blood on his blade admiringly and drew him into bed coyly and amorously. He wanted that feeling again.  
  
  
  
He would find each of the men whose sheer existence had caused Erik to be on the bridge that night. He would punish them for their crimes, against Erik and Erik’s people and humanity.

He would find Sebastian Shaw for Raven. But he would kill Sebastian Shaw for Erik.  
  
  
  
“Be careful,” the Interpol agent outside the cell cautioned MacTaggart. “We don’t know how many people he’s killed or sent into comas—we don’t even know how he does the latter—but we think it’s over ten. He’s a weird one. Knows everything about you just at a glance.” He shuddered. “He knew about my daughter. Didn’t threaten her or anything, just asked after her ballet lessons. But it was creepy as all hell.”

“Yes, thank you,” MacTaggart said, “but I won’t stay long. I doubt he has any information I would want.” But she knew as she said it that she was lying. Sebastian Shaw and his associates had done thing she hadn’t even known were possible, and here was a man—a former genetics student, of all people—a man who walked into an Interpol station, turned himself in for multiple murders, and then said nothing but, “I want to talk to the agent in charge of the case against Sebastian Shaw.”

MacTaggart was CIA, not Interpol, but the word had gone out far and wide, and when she’d heard, well—

She walked inside and nodded at Charles Xavier, who was chained to a table. He smiled at her genially. There was a strange intensity to him, a manic glint in his eyes that unsettled her. He wore a ring, but didn’t smell mated. A brief wave of pity washed over her, and his smile flickered. “It was a long time ago, Miss MacTaggart,” he said.

“What was?” she asked, startled.

“The loss of my mate,” Xavier said. She blinked at him—she hadn’t said what she’d been thinking out loud, had she?—but before she could regain her bearings, he smiled at her charmingly again and said, “So you are the agent in charge of investigating Sebastian Shaw. And CIA! How exciting. I’d heard Shaw was in the USSR, but I had no idea he was a person of interest in the Cold War. You must tell me everything.”

“I’m the one asking the questions here,” MacTaggart said sharply. “How did you know I was CIA?”

“You were thinking it very loudly,” Xavier told her. “In your investigation of Shaw, you’ve met special people, haven’t you? People he’s been collecting. I’m one of them. Not his associate, but special. And I can be of help to you, if you bring me to him.”

“What do you mean?” MacTaggart asked, startled.

Xavier smiled at her, a little meanly. _Let me show you,_ his voice sounded in her head, and she screamed.  
  
  
  
NOW.

His hands trembling, he peeled Erik’s wet clothes off and borrowed a uniform from one of the sailors who was about Erik’s size. He was a beta, and his scent on Erik’s skin made Charles want to bare his teeth and growl, but he restrained himself, only sending away MacTaggart and the others who wanted to speak with him, creating for them a little alcove of silence and solitude that would last as long as they needed. Erik was frightened. Erik was confused. Erik was—Erik was—

Erik was _here_ , and alive, and Charles brushed a hand against his own face, surprised by how hot the water on his cheeks was, and realized that he was crying, that he hadn’t stopped crying since he’d left the water. He was cold and shivering and Erik flinched when Charles touched him, his hands were so frigid, and Charles couldn’t think about any other reason Erik might shy away from his touch, but Charles nevertheless tucked a blanket tenderly around Erik’s shoulders and sat next to him, their knees close but not touching, mesmerized by the way the lights of the destroyer played off the water and splashed onto Erik’s features.

His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. There were things he wanted to know, but mostly there were things he didn’t want to know but had to know if he was going to be there for Erik the way he needed him to be. He knew enough. He knew that Erik had suffered—for _years—_ that Shaw had someone severed their bond and then replaced it with his own, that he’d used his pet telepath to scarify and roughly sew together Erik’s mind until his true self was hidden behind layers and layers of scar tissue, so thick and tough that not even Charles’s own telepathy could penetrate it. Years of torture and brainwashing, and no convenient string for him to pull on to undo it all. No way for him to just… erase the last three years of pain and rape and from Erik’s mind, not when the tweaks that _woman_ had made to his mate’s mind ran much deeper than that, sending tendrils as far back into his childhood, to his mother’s death.

“Erik,” he said gently. Tonight was the first time he’d said his name aloud since. Since he’d been screaming it on the Poniatowski bridge and trying to dive into the deep flats of the river below. Erik tilted his head in Charles’s direction, but didn’t look up. Conditioning, Charles thought with a deep shudder. A trick of abusive alphas who thought omegas belonged on their knees and nowhere else. “Erik,” Charles said again, and asked the worst question of all: “Do you know who I am?”

Erik shook his head tinily. Like he knew it was the wrong answer. He still didn’t raise his head to look at Charles.

Charles swallowed. His heart twisted and writhed in his chest, a living thing cooking on a spit, on the flame of his rage, but he beat it down, just nodded. “That’s all right,” he said softly, though it wasn’t. Mornings kissing Erik awake. Massaging the ache out of his scars. (He would have new ones now, whispered a thought drifting in Charles’s mind, and he closed his eyes and pushed down the empathetic _pain_ that rose in him in response.) Games of chess. Reading aloud to each other. Fierce debates, over tactics, over morals, over practicalities, over ideologies. Being challenged. Challenging.

Gifting kisses to Erik’s eyelids, the soft flutter of his lashes against his chin. Pushing inside him; the soft O Erik’s mouth made when he opened for Charles. Holding him in his arms, bare skin to bare skin, and making promises that Erik wouldn’t accept but that Charles needed to make anyway. To protect him. To always protect him.

“That’s all right,” he said again, when it looked like Erik didn’t believe him. “But you know Sebastian Shaw.”

“He’s my alpha,” Erik said softly, and Charles struggled not to scratch at his chest, as though he could burrow his fingers in and pull out his splintered, battered, bruised heart and make it stop hurting.

“And before that?” Charles asked. “Who were you before Sebastian Shaw was your alpha?”

Erik frowned. “I don’t—I don’t remember.”

“That’s all right,” Charles soothed. It wasn’t. It wasn’t. “My name’s Charles Xavier,” he said, thinking of the sputtering streetlamps in Prague and a knife-sharp smile of an assassin in the dark.

To his surprise, Erik flinched away, terror swimming in his eyes. Charles reached out for him, wanting to draw him near, thought better of it, froze with his hands out. “Erik?” he asked, heartsore, confused.

“He said you tried to take me from him,” Erik whispered.

That _bastard_. To take Erik from Charles and then have the gall to tell him—

Charles swallowed. “He lied to you, Erik.” Erik shook his head immediately—nothing, apparently, could stop him from being contrary—Charles folded his hands in his lap to keep himself from reaching out, drawing his knuckles across Erik’s cheekbone. “He—I had a mate. A mate I loved more than anything. We met in Prague… he killed the man I was tracking. I was trying to find my sister. He was trying to find the man who killed his mother.”

Erik cocked his head, listening now. A faint trace of confusion still wisped across his features, but those intelligent green-gray eyes were fixed on Charles’s face, and Charles, paradoxically, was assured that Erik was still in there, somewhere, assessing his weaknesses, pulling him apart, even if he didn’t know what else to do with that information. “I fell in love with him. He was brilliant and sharp-tongued and surprisingly kind, and he felt with a passion I have never experienced before. I’m a telepath, you see, and though I could influence someone to love me, I never would.”

His voice fell into a dreamlike, fairytale cadence, as he recited their love story for the first time. “He let me love him. And… he loved me back, I know that. Together we traveled all of Europe, looking for the man who had taken our loved ones for us… and then one day that man found out about us, and he took my mate from me.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik murmured, and Charles could feel his sincerity, his confusion, his wariness. Charles closed his eyes and savored it, the multifaceted strum of a mind he loved, even as damaged as it was, even as stiff and rusty as the notes were.

“I thought he was dead,” Charles said roughly. “For such a long time, I thought he was dead. But what happened was that that man—that evil man—had broken our bond. Had found another telepath to play with his memories, convince him that he never knew me. And then took him as his own mate.” 

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Erik said, and his voice cracked around the word. He looked confused at his own emotional reaction.

“Don’t be,” Charles said, and took his hand, and said, “His name was Erik,” and he dove into Erik’s mind, recklessly, desperately, like plunging into water from a cliff and not knowing if there were rocks underneath. Mental traps clung to him, the slipperiness of the coronet unbalanced him, but he pushed through, though already his head was splitting like it never had before—he seized on the brightest spot in Erik’s memory matrix, expecting to unspool the image of a Sabbath evening with his mother lighting the menorah, but instead he found—

An anonymous hotel room somewhere, it could be any city, and Erik was sitting cross-legged on the bed, frowning over a magnetic travel chess board. An alpha was sprawled across from him, on his stomach, and he was declaiming passages from a guidebook to a city—Oxford? and adding sarcastic commentary—”the Sheldonian Theatre—which puts on the best all-men’s cabaret you’ve ever seen every year—the Bridge of Sighs—where I got so drunk I vomited over the side of the bridge and the splatter landed on a passerby below—” and Erik snorted with laughter and flicked his finger and the black queen moved, neatly capturing a white rook, and outside the streetlamps burned with bronze light and the alpha smiled at him, rolling over on his back and looking at him upside-down, and the alpha nearly glittered in the low evening light, which caught on his dark hair—his luminous blue eyes—it was Charles, it was _Charles_ —

Charles jerked backward, tears streaming down his face again, and Erik was saying, “Charles, _Charles_ ,” and clutching at his head, and Charles suffered a moment of pure _what-have-I-done_ panic, that he’d damaged Erik somehow, plowed through the meticulous layers of brainwashing like a bull in a china shop, but Erik was reaching for him and it didn’t matter anymore, nothing mattered except Erik’s damp face laying against his shoulder and his arms tight around Charles’s torso. Erik wasn’t crying, not the way Charles was, tears were streaming down his face but he wasn’t gasping for breath, he just folded into Charles’s arms like a paper doll, like he belonged there. For a moment, for a bare, precious moment, he was there, _Charles’s_ Erik, his eyes glittering with hardness and joy, the music of his mind joined once more with Charles’s own.

And then it slipped away, and Erik was looking at him once more with confusion, confusion all the more frightened because he didn’t understand why he felt comfortable in the arms of this stranger, this stranger who his alpha had told him would steal him away and hurt him. He rubbed at his head, clearly unsettled by Charles’s power, but there was— _something_ —something that kept his head tilted towards Charles’s, kept his body swaying close as though caught by Charles’s center of gravity. Something unburied, something undying.

“Erik,” Charles said, knowing once more he was talking to a stranger, a stranger with an inexplicable memory of happiness with him, a stranger who had been warned against him and broken and brought to heel and for whom all of that might prove stronger than the light of that one single memory and an unspeakable affinity, the ends of their broken bond straining for each other, “Erik. I know you’re scared. I know you’re not sure what you remember, if you know me, if you believe me—but I love you. I swore, once, to protect you and care for you always. Please, please, come with me. Let me prove to you who you were, who you can be again. Not mine. Not his. But your own. Please. Please, Erik, please.”

He was crying again. He didn’t know when he’d looked down, at his hands clutched together in his lap, clinging onto himself like it could stop him from reaching out and brushing his hands, his tarnished alpha hands, against Erik’s cheekbone, his jaw, his throat. And Erik reached out. Erik reached out, and rested his fingers against Charles’s clenched hands, and said, “Okay,” and Charles could breathe again, Charles’s heart could beat again. There was no way forward but this one. He hadn’t known what he would have done if Erik had said no, how he would’ve convinced him—but all right. All right, Erik would follow him, the way he’d once followed Erik around the world, and soon enough it would be all right. He would make it all right.

“Okay,” Charles said, more to himself than to Erik. “Okay.” He would make it all right. He would make it all all right eventually.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roll mouse over for warnings (heed them, there are many).

Erik still shook with cold as the alpha across from him, as _Charles Xavier_ , stood and rose to greet the woman who was shouting at him. He still didn’t know why he’d gone overboard. He’d been sealing the cracks in the ship, like Sebastian had ordered, and had turned to follow into the submarine for their escape, and he’d--jumped instead.

But it was a mistake. Surely, when Sebastian found him, he would forgive him.

He didn’t know what he would do if Sebastian didn’t forgive him.

The alpha was shouting back now. They were talking about him. About taking him back to some facility and interrogating him about Sebastian. He knew that the alpha was a telepath. Had the memory--if that even had been a memory, it now hung hazy and indistinct at the edges of his mind, like a low wolf moon--been a trick? Something to get him to cooperate with the authorities that were hunting Sebastian, the way he’d always said they would do if they knew about him, about the powers he commanded? Sebastian had warned him about Charles Xavier; shouldn’t he have listened?

But the emotion that had shone in the alpha’s eyes when he’d said, “His name was Erik.” But the shape of his smile in the memory, which was fading now, but had made him feel--so warm. Warmth like he’d never experienced before, warmth as powerful as the Atlantic Ocean was cold. He shuddered again in spite of himself.

They were arguing now about where the alpha would go, if he would follow the woman to the facility but keep Erik in his custody. Erik thought, shamefully, that if he had a choice, he would keep close to the alpha, who looked at him with--with--something indescribable. Sebastian wouldn’t have liked that. But Sebastian wasn’t here; he was alone for the first time in nearly three years, since Sebastian had saved him--he had to do what it took to survive, didn’t he? To survive long enough for Sebastian to find him, and save him again. And the alpha… appearances could be deceiving, but there was something instinctual that told Erik that the alpha would be kind to him.

And then there was the matter of his story. If what he said was really true…

Conflicting notions pulled at Erik like birds yanking at his hair. He curled in on himself closer, closer. His arms around his knees to comfort himself, like he had in the camps--

\--but that thought slipped away like water--

They were arguing about him again.

“--a liability--”

“He’s traumatized! He’s out of his mind with fear and pain, and you want to cuff him and put him in a little box like you did me--”

Like you did me. Had the alpha been captured by these people? Hurt? For being a mutant? Erik wondered if the alpha had been afraid, concern welling from him like blood from a wound. He hoped not, and had no idea why. He just--didn’t like the idea of the alpha feeling afraid.

“You _walked into custody_ to help us with Shaw! Now we’ve lost him, he could be anywhere in the world, and you’re impeding access to our _only lead_ \--”

“You want to interrogate a terrified omega?!”

“Don’t give me that chauvinist bullshit, _I’m_ an omega, you knothead--”

She put a hand on the alpha’s shoulder, and he snarled and shrugged it off.

“Screw this,” he snarled, and put a hand to his temple--

The woman stiffened. In a heartbeat, she’d done an about-face, had turned around and was issuing orders to the rest of the crew to get them to dry land, and then Xavier would direct them from there. Erik shuddered at this demonstration of the alpha’s power. It was--it made hot shivers pulse down his spine. He folded his hands over his knees and watched as the alpha looked back at him, his harsh expression momentarily softening into gentle reassurance.

 _It’ll be okay_ , Erik heard in his mind, and he flinched, not expecting it. The alpha immediately looked chagrined. He stepped over to Erik, and murmured, “Sorry. I didn’t think--I’m just used to--sorry. It’ll be all right, though. I’ll get them to drop us off in the port, and then I’ll charter a flight to take us--wherever we want to go.”

“Where are we going?”

“I--” A complicated expression crossed the alpha’s face, as though he had never considered this before. “Home,” he said after a long moment. “We’re going to my family home, in Westchester.”

Erik nodded, his hands twined tightly in his lap. The alpha smiled kindly at him, and made a gesture like he wanted to reach out and tuck Erik’s hair behind his ear--but he pulled back at the last moment, and stuffed his hands into the pockets of the clothes he’d borrowed from one of the sailors. “I’ll be back soon,” he said softly. “Don’t--jump into the ocean, okay?”

Erik nodded gravely. The alpha smiled at him, that complicated melange of emotions that seemed to both convey unimaginable sorrow and fierce, inexpressible joy, and, slowly, telegraphing his motions, as though he felt he ought to know better than to touch but just couldn’t help himself, reached out and took Erik’s hand, unwinding his fingers from where they were wrapped around each other, and stroked a thumb along his palm. Erik shuddered at the press of skin against skin, which caused heat to flare in him--a dizzy giddiness unlike anything he could remember outside his heat, a tightening of his skin, a flush down his chest. The alpha didn’t seem to notice. He just squeezed Erik’s hand once before letting him go, a pained expression crossing his face as he did so, like he never wanted to let him go again. And then he stood and jogged over to the man wearing captain’s epaulets and started speaking to him in swift, clipped tones that Erik couldn’t hear over the rush and sway of the water.

His family home. Erik shifted. He wondered if he’d been there before, in this alternate life he’d supposedly led. He wondered if Sebastian would be able to find him there easily. He wondered if Sebastian would punish him for not fighting, for not submitting for interrogation--but surely this was better than being beaten and abused into giving up his alpha’s plans? Surely this was better.

Sebastian would forgive him. Right?  
  
  
  
The alpha kept him close as they disembarked and got into a sleek, unmarked black car that the female agent had called to take them to the airport. Erik looked back, taking in the blank faces of the sailors, especially the captain and the agent, and shuddered again at this display of sheer power on the alpha’s behalf. The alpha bundled him into the backseat and then slid in next to him, his warmth like a furnace roaring next to him. Erik was still faintly trembly with cold. The alpha only noticed when he was pressed up next to him, the silent but persistent shaking of his hands and legs.

“You’re still cold,” he said in dismay, and immediately slid off the jacket he’d appropriated from one of the sailors to drape around Erik’s shoulders. He paused after he’d done it, like he’d just realized that maybe he shouldn’t have. “Is that… all right?” he asked, and Erik hated the note of hesitation in his tone, so he nodded, and the alpha relaxed against him.

The small plane that the alpha chartered to take them to New York had ample space for two people. Erik curled up in his seat and watched the cities pass beneath him with fascination, maps of glittering light spread out beneath the wings of their plane. It stirred something familiar in him, one of those lost memories that he had never asked about and Sebastian had never mentioned. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever been on a plane before, but the way the take-off pressed him back into his seat, the way the bottom of his stomach fell out when turbulence hit, the sheer sense of _safety_ of being encased in pure metal, not like the boat, whose hull had been reinforced with metal but was crafted from wood--it all felt. Familiar. Beloved.

The alpha watched him. He turned away the stewardess who came to offer them drinks with a press of fingers to his temple. “Sorry,” he said to Erik after. “You looked… like you didn’t want to be disturbed.”

Erik ducked his head. “Thank you,” he murmured. You always thanked an alpha when they acted on your behalf, he’d learned.

The alpha looked as though he wanted to say something, pain briefly crossing his features, but he turned away and clenched his fingers on the armrest instead. Erik wondered what he’d done wrong.

They arrived at Westchester County Airport as the sun was peeking over the Catskills. The alpha called another car to take them about twenty minutes away. Erik’s first glimpse of the alpha’s family home was obscured by the sun, but the alpha got out and unlocked a heavy padlock holding closed a set of cast-iron gates that Erik could feel had rusted away somewhat but were still strong and very tall. He pushed them open, straining with effort from where the rust had made the hinges difficult to move, and Erik wondered why he didn’t just tell him to move the gates with his powers.

And then they were going up the winding lane, and--

The alpha’s family home was huge, a sprawling fortress of a mansion that looked over expansive, wildly overgrown grounds. It was built like one of the English estates of old, a hunting lodge transported to upstate New York, with dormer windows and a stately old tower rising from the center. An old, unused fountain listed to the side; weeds had crawled up it and clogged the pipes. The grounds were a riot of dandelions and wild violet, weeds but weeds that had cast what once must have been neatly-manicured lawns into astonishing blankets of purple and yellow.

The alpha helped him out of the car, though Erik had warmed up over the plane ride and was no longer shaking. The alpha treated him with such delicacy, like he was a thing that could break. (He was not a thing that could break. Sebastian had proved that many times over.) Erik wasn’t sure what he felt about it. The alpha glanced at the driver, who without a word stepped back into the car and drove away. “He’ll forget where he dropped us off as soon as he gets back to the airport,” the alpha told him. “I--there are plenty of old cars in the garage, if you want to go somewhere--or I can rent something nicer for you--”

Erik looked at him with incomprehension. “I thought I was staying here with you?”

“You are, but--” the alpha struggled for words. “I don’t want you to feel. Trapped here. Like a prisoner. Because you’re not,” he said, passion thrumming through his voice and heating Erik again with that strange giddy sensation. “I fought to keep you from being a prisoner--but if you want anything I’ll get it for you, of course--”

“What would I want?” Erik asked.

The alpha’s face, oddly, fell at that. Erik had only meant that he was grateful, of course, would do anything the alpha wanted to repay him for his kindness and protection, but the alpha responded like he’d been slapped in the face. Erik wanted to fumble for his hands, to figure out what he’d done wrong, but the alpha stepped back and groped for words, “I--I’m sorry about the state of this place. No one’s lived here for a long time. You deserve--” He sucked in a deep breath and didn’t continue. He just turned to the large front doors and hesitantly slid a key into the locks, turning them with effort--the mechanisms inside had grown stiff with disuse, Erik could feel--and then pushing the doors open with the same impatience he had used with the gate.

Erik followed him inside. Everything was smothered in drop cloths. A huge white cloth covered a chandelier that hung from the ceiling, and the heavy mahogany furniture was similarly covered to protect it from a layer of dust as thick as a blanket. The alpha coughed. The dust was thick in the air, caked on the windows, from which light shone which was yellow not from the sun but from grime. Wherever the alpha took a step, dust rose from the rugs and carpets. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and he sounded wretched. “This place is… awful. But. It’s safe. I’ll make sure you’re safe here.”

Erik looked at him and nodded, and that seemed to be what the alpha needed to relax.

“You must be exhausted,” the alpha said, kindness seeping into his voice. “There are bedrooms everywhere--you can choose, or--”

“I’ll sleep wherever you want me to,” Erik said reassuringly.

The alpha’s face fell again. “I… here,” he said and led him upstairs to a large bedroom with a double bed. “It’s my old room,” he said, distractedly. The mattress had been stripped and the alpha ran around for a few moments searching various linen closets stashed around the hallway. Finally he emerged with a set of sheets. “I’ll wash them tomorrow,” he said shamefacedly. “…As soon as I figure out where the laundry is.”

“I can help,” Erik offered, but the alpha shook his head.

“No. Rest. Please,” he said, tempering his command with a plea. Erik nodded obediently. The alpha smiled at him, a little wearily, and reached out slowly to run a hand through Erik’s hair. He hesitated, then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Erik’s forehead. Erik shuddered, that old familiar dizzy heat spiraling up and around him.

The alpha spread the sheets over the bed. Erik scrambled to help, but the alpha waved him down, tucking the sheets in with neat hospital corners. When he saw Erik looking, he smiled, and said softly, “You taught me how to properly make up a bed, once,” and then became so flushed and embarrassed-looking that he fluttered out of the room without bothering to tell Erik what he expected of him. 

_Rest,_ the alpha had said, and Erik crawled into bed and curled on his side. He really was very tired. He would help the alpha clean and make the house inhabitable when he woke. Sebastian kept maids for that sort of thing, but this alpha was almost nothing like Sebastian. He was most alike to him in the way that he made Erik tremble, but with a kind of warmth instead of the coldness he associated with Sebastian’s touch. He closed his eyes thinking of temperature differentials--  
  
  
  
"Erik," the alpha said, tenderly, and Erik woke.

He wasn't home, in his and Sebastian's cabin, but somewhere else, somewhere that smelled of must and neglect. He sat bolt upright, trying to get his bearings, momentarily disoriented, before he remembered. The ship. Going overboard. Sebastian sailing away. Charles Xavier held up a placating hand from where he was sat on the edge of the bed, his eyebrows creased with worry but a hesitant smile on his face. “Hello. It’s only me.”

Erik looked at him, drinking in the planes of his face and the edges of his features which felt so _familiar,_ and the alpha’s expression clouded over with pain, probably thinking that Erik’s hesitation was lack of recognition, when really it was _too much_ recognition that stilled his tongue, froze his movements. “I found the laundry,” the alpha said hopefully to fill the silence, and gestured towards a set of sheets that looked substantially whiter and cleaner than the sheets Erik had found himself tangled in. “And I went down to town, got you some things to wear… nothing like what you usually wear… usually _wore_ … but… if you want anything else I can take you? And I got us dinner. I thought you might be hungry, you haven’t eaten all day.”

“Thank you,” Erik murmured. He took a curious look at the clothes folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The alpha’s grin widened.

“Vain,” he murmured, and Erik ducked his head immediately, his cheeks coloring at having been caught out.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, and the alpha immediately looked horrified.

“No, Erik--I’m--I’m sorry--it was just something I used to say to you--and you would say it back, because your vanity is nothing compared to mine--” Erik tried to imagine calling an alpha vain, and the beating he would likely receive because of it, and shuddered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. You should get dressed. The clothes are for you, after all, and you’ve been wearing that spare uniform all day.”

The alpha rose abruptly and left, though he didn’t go very far; he stood outside the door, determinedly staring out, as if to give Erik privacy, though Erik had long left privacy behind as a concept for alphas, not omegas. He stripped off and hesitated. He had no idea what the alpha would like him to wear. The clothes he’d gotten him were very much unlike the clothes the alpha wore himself. In the end, Erik chose the softest--a thick black turtleneck and a dark pair of cotton trousers. The darker colors made him feel safer, like he could blend into the shadows and not be seen.

“I’m ready,” he called softly to the alpha.

He turned to look back at him--and his expression crumpled, as though he’d seen a ghost and all the preparation in the world had failed him. “Erik,” he sighed, as though the very word caused him pain. “I knew it was you, but--you didn’t look like yourself. Until now.”

Without thinking, Erik reached forward and ran a finger by the corner of the alpha’s eye. The alpha closed his eyes, bliss briefly overtaking his features, and Erik could feel the flutter of his eyelashes against his skin. His finger came away wet. The alpha looked at him, tears still glimmering but not falling beyond that one lapse in control.

“Was I really yours?” Erik asked.

The alpha-- _Charles_ \--took his hand and gripped it tightly. “As I was yours,” he said roughly, and Erik closed his eyes and tried to imagine what that would mean, but it was too big, too momentous, and his thoughts slid off the magnitude of the thought like the surface was ungraspable ice. When he opened his eyes, Charles was looking at him, and looking into his eyes was like looking out onto a deep well of sadness, as though he knew what had just gone on in Erik’s head--and perhaps he did--and was disappointed by it. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

He didn’t let go of his hand.

Charles led him to a massive spread of food, with dishes from what Erik suspected was every restaurant in a ten-mile radius. “I didn’t know what you were in the mood for,” he said, a little shyly. “And you’ve gotten so thin--just eat anything.”

There were a couple of desserts sat at the foot of the table. Erik drifted towards what looked like a towering tiramisu. Charles chuckled, and when Erik looked back, Charles said, “You and your sweet tooth,” and took a plate and loaded it with the tiramisu and passed it to Erik, and Erik gorged himself on coffee-flavored cream and chocolate and chicken and beans and french fries until he thought he was going to be sick, and Charles watched him the whole time, his eyes slowly regaining a little bit of that sparkle, a little bit of that shine that Erik found so transfixing, out of what Erik suspected might be the fulfillment of the alpha drive to provide, but also he suspected that it was something else entirely.  
  
  
  
When night came, Charles escorted him back upstairs and waved Erik off when he tried to help him make the bed with the new, fresh sheets. He beat some of the dust back with a rag and threw the windows open to air out the room. “It shouldn’t get too cold at night,” he told him. “I’ll… I’ll be in the next room over, all right? If you need anything.”

Erik nodded. _What would you like me to do?_ he wanted to ask. Not knowing his purpose here bothered him, itched at him in a fundamental way at the back of his mind. Charles nodded back once, severely, more to himself than to Erik, and then departed in a way that Erik might have described as _fled._

Erik got into bed and stared at the moon through the window, which hung, full and ponderous as a droplet of milk hanging in the sky. Most of the lights in the mansion were off, and he could hear, faintly, through the thick, well-constructed walls, Charles moving around next door. He waited. He waited for Charles to return and make use of him, for Charles to crawl into his bed and turn him on his back, for him to slide his fingers into Erik and then replace them with his cock and knot, for him to leave him leaking all over the nice, cleanly-laundered sheets. He waited until the faint sound of snoring drifted through the walls, long, long after the moon had crossed out of sight, and wondered if Charles had been having trouble sleeping, and if so, why he hadn’t just come to slake his lust and exhaustion in Erik’s body until he could sleep. It was what Sebastian would have done. What he had done, many times, when insomnia had plagued him.

When Erik finally closed his eyes, restless dreams chased him through the contours of his mind.  
  
  
  
He woke early. It had been a while since he hadn’t been fucked so thoroughly and so late into the night that he rose early enough to see the dawn. He sat up, listening carefully for noises from the neighboring room, and watched the sun streak the sky in pink and orange and blood. Clouds drifting across the rolling hills, the sun blazing out from behind them and lighting up their corners like eclipses in miniature. A ruby-throated hummingbird landed on his windowsill and surveyed him with beady, jewel-like eyes. He held out his hand and it flashed away, restless, a glint of green-and-red against the hills and forests and, faintly, in the distance, the town far below. Peace descended over him. He thought dizzily that it was the most beautiful thing that he could remember seeing.

When he’d drank his fill of the view and the silence, only his heart reminding him of the rush and rumble of the ocean, he rose, dressed, and ventured out to find a bathroom. There was a new box of toothpaste and a toothbrush still in its packet waiting for him. Then he navigated down to the great hall and frowned as he considered the task of cleaning it all. Maybe there were buckets and rags somewhere…?

Sebastian had kept him in his bed and on his arm most of the time; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done a menial chore like dust. But he’d chosen to go with Charles, and if this was what he wanted Erik for… it was nice to be given a purpose that didn’t involve him on his back or on his knees. He started by carrying the drop clothes outside, then found the rag that Charles had used last night and began to dust. He hummed to himself as he worked, a little nonsense tune. Then--

“What are you doing?!” a voice rang out, and Erik flinched instinctively. He wanted to go to his knees, but that would be silly; Charles was standing at the top of the stairs, still in pajamas, looking down at him with something approaching angry confusion.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice failing him, “I’m sorry,” he said again with more strength. “I thought you might like--I didn’t know you didn’t want me to touch--why did you bring me here, if not to--”

“I--” Suddenly, Charles punched the banister and then swore. Erik looked up and saw him clutching his fist, grimacing.

Erik jogged up the stairs and, without thinking, without asking permission, shouting at himself for it the whole time, took Charles’s hand in his and gently peeled off the fingers of Charles’s left hand where they were curled protectively around the knuckles of his right. They were bruised and swollen, red already shading to purple, and Erik frowned. “You’ll need to wrap these,” he said, and then looked up hesitantly, wondering at his own impertinence, bracing himself. But Charles was looking at him softly.

“Would you do it for me?” he asked, and Erik nodded. He had experience dressing wounds. He knew what to do.

As he knelt in the bedroom Charles had slept in last night and wound old gauze around Charles’s bruised knuckles, Charles reached out and let a hand drift across Erik’s cheekbones, his jawline. “I didn’t bring you here as a servant,” Charles said roughly. “ _I_ will clean out this place. It’s my responsibility, anyway.”

“Then why did you bring me here?” Erik said, glancing up and then back down to his work. He ran a thumb gently across the edge of the gauze, and Charles sighed.

“I--I don’t know. Because I want you to be safe. I want you to--to gain some weight back and--get your memories back and--and then--” Charles struggled with words. Erik looked up, questioningly. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I brought you here. I just knew that I couldn’t stand to let you out of my sight for another minute. Another second.”

Erik felt heat suffuse his face. The way Charles spoke to him, spoke _about_ him--it was like nothing he could remember experiencing. Sebastian had always spoken of him with a casual possession, with a deep satisfaction. Erik had understood that he was powerful and thus valuable, owned and therefore protected. But Charles spoke about him as though his whole life hinged on Erik's safety, on his happiness, on things Erik had almost no concept of. Charles spoke about him with such terrible, consuming warmth. Charles spoke about him like he was the sunrise coming up over a dark and cold land.

"Then what should I do?" Erik asked. What did you ask of the sun?

"What do you want to do?" Charles returned.

Erik wrestled with the concept of _want_. He wanted not to be hurt. He wanted to know what would happen to him next. He wanted Sebastian to come for him. He wanted to stay with Charles.

"Can I see the gardens?" he asked finally.

"They're not much to them anymore," Charles said, a gentle smile spreading, "but yes. Of course you can see the gardens."  
  
  
  
Erik stepped out on a carpet of weed and clover and breathed deeply. Sebastian had let him outside, but never like this, where there were no other people for miles and the air felt fresh and brisk. Sebastian preferred tropical climates, and Erik was used to the deck of the boat or a few quick steps to a waiting car before he would spend the rest of their stay in Sebastian's bedroom suite.

He heard Charles behind him. "I got you shoes--" he was saying, but stopped when he saw Erik's toes flexing in the dirt. "Oh, well," he said, a smile in his voice, "I suppose a little more dirt can't hurt."

Erik gave him a faint smile. "Thank you," he said softly, and laced them on. He hesitated, waited for Charles's nod before he stepped further into the overgrown garden, wild brambles catching at the hem of his pants, nettles itching at his ankles. There were raised flowerbeds that had gone to seed, were now just patches of dirt and dandelions, yellow flushes of color rising up from the dirt. There was a walking path where wildflowers had run riot in the cracks between cobbles. The lawn was thick with green, spread with lush untamed grass that came halfway up his shin. He basked in the sun and sat among the flowers, listening to the hum of bees, watching the mourning doves come and go.

In this cold-shading-to-lukewarm clime, he had found with Charles things he hadn't had for the last three years: solitude, nature, and something approaching contentment.

Charles watched him. Not all the time--he spent much of it doing something to the house that Erik suspected was his idea of cleaning--but if he went more than fifteen minutes without a glimpse of Erik he grew anxious and went out to find him. Erik kept seeing him in windows, peeking around the corner of the building, like he just wanted to reassure himself that Erik hadn't dissolved into the air. When the sun was high, Charles brought him a pitcher of lemonade and peanut butter sandwiches, and they ate together in silence in a field so isolated you almost couldn’t see the house from it, mostly concealed behind a hillock as it was. Charles smelled of dust and alpha sweat and at some point he'd rolled up his shirtsleeves to expose his bare forearms and Erik's gaze kept darting to them, though he couldn't quite fathom why.

In the afternoon, he lay on his back in the field and let the sun pass over him. He might have slept--at one point he fancied he could feel the movement of the world beneath him, as it sped through space--but he was awake when Charles, moving softly, crunched through the grass and stood at his feet. “You should come in,” Charles said, his voice gentle and quiet, not commanding. “It’s getting dark.”

Erik rose and they ate another meal--of sandwiches, Erik was beginning to think that Charles didn’t quite know how to make anything else--and retired early. Erik sat on his bed in the pajamas Charles had given him, listening to Charles undress in the room next door, and thought. He wondered why Charles had given him his old bedroom. Why he wasn’t sleeping in here with Erik. He wondered if Charles were waiting for Erik to come to _him._ Why else sleep so close next to him, though not in the same bedroom? Perhaps Charles liked his privacy. Erik could understand that. A house this big--he must have grown up with plenty of it.

More than that, he found himself in the strange position of _wanting_ to give Charles pleasure. Charles had been--so kind to him, with his fumblings and his confusion, and he wanted to make him feel good. 

He waited until ten, then slipped into Charles’s room. Charles wasn’t asleep--he was staring at the ceiling with wet eyes. Erik didn’t like this sadness which slunk around after him like a neglected cat; he hoped that making use of Erik’s body would cheer him. He settled on the bed next to Charles, who started. His head whipped around. “Erik--? What are you--”

Erik leaned down and kissed him.

It was--

It was like no other kiss he could remember. He lost himself in Charles’s scent, in the softness of his red-bitten lips, in the way his lips parted with surprise so that Erik could coax the kiss into deepening. Erik kissed him until he was dizzy, until Charles was making broken sounds underneath him, until he was pressed so closely to him that Charles was crushing him to his chest like he wanted them to become one person. Charles’s tongue slipped hesitantly forward to press against the seam of Erik’s lips, and he opened for him obediently, letting Charles lick into the wet heat of his mouth. It felt so _familiar,_ as though he had dreamed of kissing him every night for the last year, but visceral in a way that blew far past any kind of imagining. Erik whimpered and melted into Charles’s grip.

He swung a leg up to straddle him, feeling Charles’s hot need press firmly into the backs of his thighs. He reached behind him and stroked Charles’s clothed cock, imagining how it would feel inside of him--how Charles might fuck into him, with the same tender viciousness that was how he treated Erik in all other matters--how he might leave love bites down the column of Erik’s throat as he writhed on his cock, how he might bite until Erik bled, or cried--

Charles shoved him away so hard that Erik almost toppled off the bed. Breathing hard, eyes wild, he stared at Erik like he’d never seen an omega before, ravenous but baffled, and rasped, “What. What was that.”

“I--” Erik’s heart pounded in his chest. His position suddenly seemed very precarious. Stupid, idiot, why hadn’t he just waited for Charles to come to him-- “I just wanted to--to please you--”

“I don’t want that,” Charles said harshly. “I don’t. Why did you. Oh god. I don’t ever want you to feel like--like you have to--”

In an instant, Charles had pushed him off where he was perched on his thighs--though more gently this time, like it was a matter of urgency but not disgust--and ran for the bathroom across the hall. Erik flinched as he heard the first retch, the sound of sickness he was well familiar with, and tried to make himself small. He’d screwed up, he knew it now--he still wasn’t quite sure how--perhaps Charles didn’t like omegas who took initiative, Sebastian had always seemed so pleased when Erik crawled into his lap but Charles wasn’t Sebastian, as was becoming more clear each and every moment. Erik forced himself to breathe, in and out, as he listened to Charles be thoroughly sick across the hall. Finally the sound came of Charles rinsing out his mouth, and then slow footsteps as he returned to his room. Erik slid off the bed and got onto his knees, hoping that it would mitigate some of the anger he had felt radiating off of Charles.

Charles stopped in front of him. Erik braced himself for a kick. But instead Charles knelt down beside him and wrapped his arms around Erik. Erik froze--he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself--he knelt, stiffly, feeling the floorboards dig into his knees as Charles hugged him, his face buried in Erik’s shoulder. Erik could feel something hot and wet bleeding through his clothes where Charles’s face was pressed.

“Erik,” Charles said, and then seemed to be able to say no more.

“I’m sorry,” Erik whispered.

“No. No, I’m sorry. Whatever I did to make you feel like--like you had to-- _repay_ me like that--I’m sorry. Erik. It doesn’t matter if you never let me touch you again, as long as you feel--safe--”

“I do,” Erik tried to say, but Charles shook his head almost violently.

“Safe like--like you trust that I’ll never hurt you, no matter how--” a noise at the back of his throat, like a gag-- “ _bad_ you are. That I’ll never touch you unless you want it to.”

“But I do,” Erik said plaintively. This was so confusing. “I--don’t you want me? You look at me sometimes--”

“I always want you,” Charles said roughly. “But not like this. You don’t--Erik--I’ve been in your head. You don’t even know what _want_ feels like anymore.”

“What does want feel like?” Erik asked, frustrated.

“Like--” Charles straightened, but only to press his forehead against Erik’s, and he closed his eyes as if in concentration--

And all of a sudden Erik could _feel_ what Charles felt for him, the fierce protectiveness, the sympathetic pain, and above all the gaping chasm in his chest that Charles thought of as _want._ He wanted Erik. He wanted Erik’s smile, a smile Erik hardly recognized, he wanted Erik’s kisses, his touches, he wanted Erik on his back with his legs spread but still smiling joyfully, he wanted Erik’s heats and his passionless days, he wanted Erik to look at him with equal want back. And Erik had to admit that Charles was right--he could barely fathom the depth of this kind of _want_ , this want which was as possessive as Sebastian’s but infinitely kinder, this want which was rooted not in Erik’s body but in his joy. He thought of his desire to make Charles feel good, and it felt so simple, so flat compared to this maelstrom of desire that bordered on desolation. He wanted Erik, but he wanted Erik _back,_ and Erik shook with the desperate pain of it.

“What if--” he whispered, “what if I can’t?”

Charles seemed to understand. He always seemed to understand. “Then--” he struggled, and the agony that flashed across the link between their minds was so powerful Erik flinched back from it-- “then I will spend the rest of my life making you as happy as you can be.” He closed his eyes. “This I swear,” he whispered, almost to himself, and Erik thought inexplicably of the old marriage vows and the image of Charles on one knee, an image that was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared in his mind’s eye. Erik shook with the force of it.

Charles walked him back to bed. He didn’t go quite as far as to tuck him in, but he watched him for a long time, and Erik blinked back, Charles’s face luminous with moonlight, his expression tender but with lingering lines of pain. Erik hated the thought that he’d tried to give Charles pleasure and had ended up putting those lines on his face instead. He closed his eyes, heartsore.

And he dreamed of Charles saying, _I want you by my side for all my days--_  
  
  
  
The next day, when Erik asked if he could help, Charles reminded him that he didn’t want him to feel like a servant. “I know,” Erik said. “I would… still like to help you.”

Charles smiled at him, wiped sweat off his brow. “You could get me some water while I scrub down the floors,” he suggested. And Erik smiled back.  
  
  
  
He must have worked to exhaustion all the cares that usually plagued his dreams, because that night he had a nightmare.

Not a nightmare. A memory. Of Sebastian and the gun.

Still aching and sore from the second miscarriage, and Sebastian had thrown him onto the bed with his preternatural strength. Had traced up his thigh with the muzzle of his revolver, had pressed the tip against his hole as Erik sobbed and struggled, Sebastian hissing in his ear, _What good to me is this if you can’t even do what you were made to do,_ the hard unyielding stretch of the barrel inside of him, the sharp scent of blood in his mouth--

Sebastian fucked him with the gun, and he could feel the terrible weight of it, he could feel the metal components of the firing mechanism, the way the gunpowder was encased in a loving circle of steel, and Sebastian made him beg for it, and he had, because it would have hurt more if he hadn’t--beg for the bullet, beg for death--he knew he could deflect bullets, it was Sebastian’s favorite trick of his, but he’d never tried at so close a range before, _Please, alpha, don’t,_ and Sebastian had laughed and made him come on his gun and when Erik was coming down from the high of climax, breathing heavily, Sebastian had fucked him until he was mewling with pain-pleasure and sobbing with the loss of another child. Another.

Erik woke screaming and gasping for breath and Charles was there, Charles was pressing him down into the bed and saying urgently, “It’s all right, my love, it’s okay, it’s just a dream--” but he was white and shaking and Erik knew that Charles had seen, had slipped into his mind and _felt_ it with him, and he clutched at Charles and begged forgiveness and Charles held him, hushing him, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” though it wasn’t, though he’d made Charles, _Charles_ , who was so kind, experience one of the worst things that had ever happened to him.

“Can I--” Erik hiccuped. “Can I stay with you. Just for tonight?”

 _“Yes,”_ Charles gasped, “yes, of course, of course.”

It wasn’t how Erik had imagined coming to Charles’s bed--returning to it, he supposed, remembering Charles’s insistence that he’d lived an entire life with him before Sebastian--but Charles was warm and he smelled of comfort, of _alpha_ , and Erik buried his face in Charles’s neck, unable to look at him, unable to see the pity or the disgust or the sheer pain. Charles’s arms came around him hesitantly, shakily. “Erik,” he said, sounding broken. “Erik. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry--”

“What are you--” Erik struggled for words at the foreignness of it. “Why are you sorry?”

“I’m sorry--that I didn’t find you--that I assumed you were dead--that I didn’t even _look_ \--I felt the bond break and I--I--I lost myself, but worse than that, I failed you.” Charles’s breath hitched, and Erik could hear the wetness of tears in his voice. “My love. My darling. I promised I’d protect you--”

“Don’t,” Erik said. It was too big, too much to deal with when he was still coming down from a nightmare about Sebastian, when he was taking solace in another alpha’s arms. He could barely comprehend what Charles’s story might imply for him, for _them,_ on a good day, much less now. “Please. I. I can’t.”

“Okay,” Charles whispered. “Okay.” And he just held him, and, shuddering, Erik contemplated whether it was a betrayal of Sebastian to find such solace in Charles’s arms if Charles had had him first.

He shifted, and felt for the first time the press of metal against his cheek. Curious, he ran a finger questioningly along the length of chain Charles wore around his neck, even to bed, it seemed. It looped through a titanium ring. He glanced up to find Charles watching him, an expression of deep pain writ across his features. “What is it?” he whispered, like a mourner at a funeral.

“A wedding ring,” Charles said, and the two of them were quiet for a long time.  
  
  
  
Two days after that, Hank arrived.

As soon as he got the telephone line reconnected, calls from the CIA began flooding in. Charles began by shouting them down, but eventually, Erik surmised, they wore him down by agreeing not to go after Erik or attempt to coax Charles off the estate to help in their clandestine missions--not, Charles said, that they could when all their leverage over him, which was that he’d been confessed to the murders of multiple Nazis throughout Europe, had mysteriously vanished. ”It helps,” Charles had said confidentially, smiling, “that some hapless janitor destroyed all the files of my official incarceration at Interpol.”

But he finally agreed to let an agent, Hank McCoy, visit the estate--not to speak to Erik, but to talk with Charles about scientific applications of his telepathy. Curious, and beginning to trust that Charles would not hurt him for showing interest in things, Erik drifted to the window to watch him arrive. The man who came rambling up the lane in a truck that he didn’t seem comfortable driving was not what he had been expecting. Hank McCoy was young, fresh-faced, skinny, and an omega. Charles stood in the drive to greet him, arms crossed skeptically, though he softened once he scented Hank.

“Did the CIA think sending an omega would temper some of my worse qualities?” Charles’s voice wafted up from the ground floor, a hint of humor in his tone.

“Yes,” Hank mumbled. “But,” he puffed his chest out, “I’m well-qualified to discuss the finer technical aspects of invention and biology with you.”

“Two doctorates from MIT at your age, I suspect you are,” Charles said.

“Did you--research me?”

“No,” Charles said. “Telepathy, remember? And a mutant, too? Oh--but the CIA doesn’t know about that, do they? Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Why don’t you leave those bugs you were supposed to plant in your truck, and we’ll go inside and have tea like civilized people?”

Tea. This, at last, was something that Erik could do. Charles barely let him lift a finger to help out his never-ending war on the dust and neglect of the manor, but he sheepishly allowed Erik to cook, given that Erik’s muscle memory seemed to at least know how to make scrambled eggs, while Charles, if he had his way, would subsist entirely off of sandwiches. Erik bustled down to the kitchen to assemble a tea tray. Charles stuck his head in, obviously coming to do the tea himself; his lips thinned when he saw Erik there, the way they always did when he worried that Erik was acting too much like a servant, but Erik made a little shooing gesture, which seemed to placate him. Erik had become well-versed in the art of soothing Charles’s moods over the last couple of days. He heard the low murmur of Hank and Charles in the sitting room and brought the tea out to them. 

Hank stared at him. Erik wondered what the CIA had told Hank about him to make him look at Erik with such a mix of fear and naked curiosity. Charles plucked at his sleeve as he set down the tea tray. “Do you want to stay?” he asked, in that gentle way of his that implied that it was fine if Erik said no, a novelty that Erik was having fun exercising every now and then. Like now, he shook his head, and Charles smiled, squeezed his hand, and let him go. Erik slipped from the room, but stayed close in the kitchen so that he could listen.

“Is that…” Hank asked hesitantly.

“That’s Erik, and that’s all you need to know about him,” Charles said pleasantly. “If you upset him, I will have you out on your ass so quickly you won’t even remember packing up your things. Understand?”

“…Yes,” Hank said timidly. 

“Good. Now tell me about this psionic enhancer you’re thinking so loudly about.”  
  
  
  
The next time he saw Hank, he actually spoke with him. He was sitting on a stone bench he’d cleared off in the gardens, listening to the larks and watching bees dart from dandelion to dandelion. Hank, looking a little frightened--whether of Erik or of Charles’s wrath, he couldn’t say--trundled by him and hesitantly took a spot on the bench beside him. He was clutching one of the sandwiches Charles had foisted off onto him in his hands. Erik didn’t look at him. He thought it would probably be all right--Hank was an omega, and Charles had laid his claim thoroughly--but he was out of practice speaking to anyone except Charles.

Hank spoke first. “I’m Hank.”

“I know,” Erik said.

“Right. Okay.” Hank gnawed nervously at his sandwich, before he blurted, “Are you--I mean--Charles. Are you. Does he treat you well?”

Erik blinked. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “Why?”

“Good, because--I like him. Not, not like that,” Hank said hurriedly, though Erik was hardly sure what he meant. “Not like… whatever it is that’s going on between you two. I mean. I would like to be his friend. And I wouldn’t want to be, if he were mistreating his omega.”

“Do you know who I am?” Erik said softly.

“I--no. Not really. I know the CIA wants you, that they think you’re a key witness in the Shaw case.” Erik flinched, hearing his former alpha’s--current alpha’s?--name again. Gunpowder and the salt-tang of tears on his tongue. “I know… I know that Charles took you away before they could get to you. I know that--that I’m supposed to get close to you, figure out what you know. But. I don’t know why.”

Erik studied the star-shaped pink and black flowers poking up from a bed of what he suspected were weeds. He didn’t know why he was here, either, except for the way Charles sometimes looked at him with desperate longing, so he had no idea what to tell Hank. “Do you have an alpha?” he asked. He could smell the omega on Hank, like sandalwood but saltier. It had been a long time since he’d spoken to another omega.

Hank flushed red. “No, I--I’m married to my work,” he said with a false laugh. He glanced down. “My mutation--the one that Charles figured out within seconds of meeting me--it’s physical,” he said shyly. “No one wants an omega with--well.”

He hesitated before reaching down and pulling off his shoes. His attention taken away from the flowering weeds, Erik watched with curiosity as Hank hesitantly peeled off his socks and revealed--

“Oh,” Erik said. “That’s lovely.”

Hank flushed a deep, blotchy red. “You don’t have to mock me,” he muttered.

“I’m not,” Erik said honestly. “Your feet are… beautiful. Can you--they look like hands. Can you hold things with them?”

Hank stared at Erik for a long moment, then broke into a bashful smile when he came to the conclusion that Erik was being truthful. “I can, yeah,” he said. “No one’s… no one’s ever called them beautiful before. There’s other stuff, too. I’m strong… I used to be a gymnast when I was younger.”

“That’s amazing,” Erik said, and felt a smile flit across his face. Hank gazed at him, a look approaching star-struck on his face, and Erik felt heat rise to his face and looked down. It reminded him of Mystique, of the way she’d looked at him like no one had ever called her beautiful before, either. The thought tickled something at the back of his mind, but when he reached for it, it was gone. He huffed in frustration. “You’re a scientist,” he said after a moment.

“Yes,” Hank puffed his chest out, and Erik got the impression that this was one of the few aspects of his life of which he was actually proud.

“What do you know about… memory?” Erik asked hesitantly.

“Oh.” Hank pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Well, the recent development of computer technology has shown us that memory storage in the mind is very much like memory storage on a hard drive. The implications is that memories are copied exactly as we experience them and encoded into our brains. But George Miller questions that premise. He has a really fascinating theory about short-term memory that implies that short-term memory is limited to around seven units, plus or minus two. Donald Hebb’s theory that memories are connections between neurons through repeated use is being borne out through Eric Kandel’s work on sea slugs, whose neurons we can easily observe. Lashley, of course, did a series of experiments looking for the engram, the physical encoding of a memory, but his results were inconclusive, suggesting that the _whole cortex_ handles memory--I’m rambling,” he said, disappointed, clearly having seen a certain blankness in Erik’s face that suggested he was only processing one word in three. “I. Why do you want to know? Maybe if I knew, I could… I could help.”

“My memories are… scattered,” Erik said softly. “Charles tells me one story… Sebastian told me another. And I don’t. I can’t figure out which is true.”

“A head injury?” Hank said sympathetically.

Erik shook his head slowly. “I don’t… think so.”

“…Telepathy?” Hank said after a moment.

Erik nodded. “Maybe.”

“That’s…” Hank sighed. “That’s difficult. We don’t know much about telepathy--after speaking with Charles I actually have a theory that it’s a form of instinctive telekinesis--that Charles is actually rewiring the brains of the people he uses his telepathy on--but more complex tasks, of course, which involve a greater spread of neurons require more precise skill. Maybe… if you’re having trouble accessing your memory, maybe it’s as though… the hard drive of your brain has been corrupted. Or maybe entire sections of your memory cortex have been blocked from you, and if you build up new neural connections to them, you can get them back.”

“So you think I _can_ get them back,” Erik whispered. “Figure out who I was.”

“I--maybe,” Hank said. “I don’t know.”

Erik nodded. It was as much as he had been expecting to get from Hank. “I spend a lot of time in the garden,” he said softly. “It’s the only thing that doesn’t give me a headache. I don’t think… I spent a lot of time in gardens, whoever I was before. Like this is new. Like it’s all me, not… whoever I used to be.”

Hank smiled tentatively. "That's actually swallow-wort," he said, pointing to the star-shaped weed-flowers. "It's an invasive species. Introduced from Europe in the nineteenth century. As ornamental flowers, believe it or not. They're tough, though, you can't pull them out--the roots sprout again--and almost nothing feds on it successfully.”

Erik smiled. “Tough, hm?” He pointed to a cluster of white-flowering green a little farther away. “And that?”

“Wild chervil,” Hank said. "Also invasive. In the carrot/parsley family, though it carries diseases that can infect them. It's edible, but also slightly toxic. It's a nuisance for farmers, it reduces the quality of forage for their livestock."

Erik continued to quiz Hank about various weed types, and found him a font of knowledge about not just science but botany, not just plants but everything under the sun. He was asking him about how he might go about fixing the yard up when a door slammed and he flinched, casting his eyes up to catch on Charles, who was storming toward them, looking livid.

Hank stiffened. “Oh no,” he whispered. “I--Charles warned me about speaking to you, but I--I wanted to know--”

Erik took a deep, steadying breath. Charles wasn’t angry at him--he could feel it, he could feel the waves of protectiveness coming off of him and blanketing Erik like a handmade quilt. He was angry at Hank. He thought he had upset Erik, that he was badgering him. But Erik liked Hank, and in a split second he made a decision. He didn’t want Hank to get in trouble with Charles. Hank was sweet and self-conscious and needed protection. 

He reached out and took Hank’s hand. Charles stopped in his tracks, an inscrutable mask falling across his face.

“Thank you for the conversation,” Erik said, loudly enough for Charles to hear, and then he stood and walked away.

As he drifted off further into the fields, he could hear Charles approach Hank, more slowly. “I… We should get back to work,” Charles said awkwardly, and Hank made an noise of assent, and after a while their footsteps faded back toward the house. Erik sat among the chervil and thought of a vegetable garden.  
  
  
  
In the evenings, Erik sat in the library and watched the fireflies out of one of the windows, savoring the feeling of a full stomach--Sebastian had fed him well, but he’d never had much of an appetite on the boat--and thinking, hesitantly, about reaching out and pulling one of the books down. He hadn’t worked up the courage yet, but maybe someday.

Charles found him curled up on the window seat, his knees tucked under his chin, cheek pressed to the glass. Erik turns his head at the footsteps approaching, but didn’t look at Charles. Charles was sometimes hard to process, and Erik didn’t know if it was his supposedly telepathy-addled memory or Charles’s beauty or the sheer pain that crossed his features sometimes, but he averted his gaze all the same.

“Hello,” Charles said gently.

“Hello,” Erik said softly.

Charles came to perch on the window-seat next to him. Erik could feel him studying his features, though he kept his gaze turned outward to the fireflies. “This was my father’s favorite room in the whole house,” Charles said after a moment. “And then, it became mine. There’s not much here after 1940--that’s when he died--but after he passed, I would come in here and open a book and pretend he was reading it to me. I felt close to him that way.”

“I’m sorry about your father.”

“Don’t be,” Charles said. “It was a lifetime ago.” He glanced down at his hands. “I came to ask you… would you… do you want to play chess?”

“I love chess,” Erik said, surprised, though he couldn’t remember the last time he’d played.

A tiny smile flitted across Charles’s face. “I know,” he said. “I--” he reached down and produced a travel chess set. Erik could feel the magnetic hum of it. “I brought this. You gave me this set. I thought--maybe we could play again.”

Erik studied him for a long moment. Charles fidgeted. “All right,” he said finally.

They set up on one of the small reading tables. Erik opened with the King’s Gambit, a classically aggressive move. Charles hid a smile with his hand.

“What is it?” Erik asked.

“You still play the same,” Charles said, accepting the gambit.

Erik was quiet as Charles attempted to set up a pawn chain, then demolished it in one swift move with a bishop Charles had overlooked. “What was our life like together?” he asked finally. Charles stumbled over the queen he was moving, righted it, looked at Erik who was studiously examining the board.

“Do you really want to know?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Charles swallowed. His hand fell from the chessboard. He still moved the pieces, but distractedly. Erik had him in check in a matter of two moves, though Charles wiggled out of it through judicious use of a knight. “You were…” he said, slowly, sounding out the vowels as though trying to figure out how they were flavored. “No. We were… You made me so happy. All my life, I’d been waiting for you, and I hadn’t realized.” 

Erik ducked his head. “But,” he said softly, “what was our _life_ like.”

Charles grinned crookedly. “All right. We… we traveled a lot. Hunting Nazis. Looking for a lead on… on Sebastian Shaw. You taught me almost everything I know about… a lot of things, really. How to track someone. How to hurt someone. How to kill someone. How to use my powers… you made up these exercises I would do, you let me into your mind so I could practice. I loved you for that. No one’s ever let me into their mind like that before. You forced me to up my chess game,” he said, with a laugh. Deep fondness had invaded his voice. “We would… we would read together. We disagreed. Over almost every literary interpretation we had. But it was--” he laughed again, melancholy this time, swept up in memories. “Oh, it was so fun. You--you taught me how to darn my socks. I kept telling you that I could just buy new ones, but you were adamant I learn. You never let me spoil you,” he said, the sadness growing deeper. “I wish--I wish I’d ignored you more. Bought you lovely things. I don’t know--I don’t know, when you were… taken from me, if you knew how much I loved you. I hope you did.”

Erik wanted to reassure him. Charles’s expression cut him to the core in a way he didn’t fully understand; he wanted to hold him, to kiss his forehead, to promise that he had loved him, but he didn’t _know_ , and he knew that anything he said now would come across as empty platitude. Charles sniffled, then wiped at his eyes. He glanced down at the chessboard. Erik had put him into checkmate. He chuckled.

“Again?” he asked, and Erik grinned shyly and nodded.

As Erik fingered a pawn, he asked, “What… will you do with me now? I know that you, you want me to get better,” he said hastily, as Charles opened his mouth to hotly protest. “But do you want. I mean. Do you want that back?”

“More than anything,” Charles sighed, then shook his head. “No. I want--more than anything, I want _you_ to figure out what you want, and get it. If that’s not me, then--then I can--I can accept that.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I can.”

“If it’s Sebastian?” Erik asked, aware that he was treading on dangerous ground.

Charles slammed his fist onto the chessboard. The pieces might have jumped, but they were magnetized to the board. Erik flinched back anyway. “Oh,” Charles said, instantly contrite, “I’m sorry, I didn’t--I mean--I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, to scare you. But.” Charles took a deep, steadying breath and closed his eyes, as though he were marshaling his thoughts. “It’s not what you want. Even if you think it is, it’s… you _hated_ him, Erik. He killed your mother.”

Erik shook his head violently. “No--I don’t remember that--”

“He’ll have made you forget,” Charles said, his voice gentling a little. “You hated him. More than I did, and. And he took my sister from me. He took _you_ from me. You would have never-- _never--_ chosen this. And he’s hurt you. He’s tortured you. I saw it,” and his voice shook desperately, “in my mind’s eye, and. And I guess I was wrong. What I want more than anything isn’t for you to get what you want.” Erik’s stomach dropped, but Charles continued, “What I want, more than anything, is for you to be _safe_ and happy, and you weren’t either of those things with Shaw.”

“How can you know that?” Erik said plaintively, a question he was asking of himself more than Charles.

“Because you agreed to come with me,” Charles said, and Erik shuddered. He was right. He’d known--he’d _known,_ even in the confusion of the water, that Sebastian would never forgive him if he didn’t fight, if he didn’t drown himself trying to bring back the submarine. He’d known that the punishment would be… something worse than he could possibly imagine. He’d known, though he’d buried that knowledge in the cold and the churn of the ocean, that if he let Charles touch him, let him hold him, he could never go back. And yet Charles had looked at him with such--such _passion_ in his eyes, passion like Erik had never experienced before (except he had, hadn’t he?) and Erik had--fallen. Not in love, but in something more painful and terrible than love. In need. He’d looked into Charles’s eyes and suddenly found himself unable to survive without that look trained on him.

“You’ll keep looking for him,” Erik said. He knew this to be true. “Sebastian.”

Charles flinched at the name, as he always did. “Yes,” he said firmly. “And when I find him… I’m going to kill him.” Erik shuddered, but he couldn’t help but think--if Sebastian were to die, he could be rebonded. Charles could bond him. He looked down at the chess pieces. “I won’t--” Charles said with difficulty, “--ask you to help. I know that. That it might be too much for you.” He smiled tremulously. “Like I said, all I want is for you to be safe. Safe and happy. But if you would accept,” Charles said hesitantly, “maybe I could use my telepathy to… try to undo some of the damage. Help you get your memories back.”

Erik hesitated. Charles, seeing this, immediately backtracked. “Only if you wanted me to. I would never--not without your permission.”

“Yes,” Erik said quietly.

“Yes?” Charles asked, almost incredulous.

“Yes,” Erik said, and tipped over his king.  
  
  
  
When he wasn’t lying with his head in Charles’s lap, Charles carefully sifting through his memories, as they did every night after dinner, Erik got the sense that Charles didn’t actually know what to _do_ with him. Erik spent much of his time out in the gardens when Hank was visiting, or helping Charles put the house back into some semblance of order, but now that the dust had been cleared away, the water and gas reconnected, and the main rooms they used and their bedrooms cleared out and beaten into shape, there wasn’t much left to do.

It was Hank who said, “You’re a mutant, too, right?”

Erik nodded. They’d taken the habit of eating lunch together in the garden, while Charles watched from the house and tried to pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping with his telepathy. “So what is it you do?” Hank asked.

Erik cast around for any metal in the area. There were the rivets holding the bench together, but he didn’t think that would be such a good idea. “Metal,” he said. “I can… move it, reshape it.”

“That’s fascinating,” Hank breathed. “All metal? Do you have a sense of how? How does your brain discriminate between control over metal and, say, plastic?”

“I can feel the magnetic fields around them and I… change them,” Erik said, and Hank, if anything, grew even more excited.

“Do you think you’d be able to control non-metallic magnetic charges? Magnetism is one of the fundamental forces underlying our everyday existence--normally magnetic moments of atoms cancel out, but if you could magnetize something non-magnetic, you’d be manipulating the very atoms on a fundamental level--”

“I don’t know,” Erik said, dizzy.

Hank drooped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I get… overenthusiastic. What else can you do with it?”

“I can repair metal when it’s broken,” Erik said. “I can’t be shot.”

Hank waited. “Is that… is that all you’ve done with it?” he said, sounding a little disappointed.

“As far as I can remember.”

“What about… art?” Hank asked. “Sculpture? I’m sure Charles would get you metal if you asked.”

“I--” Erik fumbled for words. “I--I don’t know. I’ve never… I don’t know.”

“The fountain in the front is made of metal,” Hank said. “Maybe you could start with that.”

“Can we try?” Erik asked, and Hank smiled. They made their way through the ankle-high grass, back to the front courtyard; the road had been cleared for Hank and his truck, weeds no longer nipping at the tires of the vehicles that rolled down the driveway, and Hank held Erik’s sandwich in his hand as the two of them surveyed the rusted wreck of the statue, a faux-Renaissance affair with dancing babies holding horns and birds spiraling up in mid-flight, the marblesque paint having long peeled away to reveal the steel underneath.

And Erik raised his hand and watched the metal in the fountain twist and writhe, spiraling up, up, the neoclassical lines of the fountain turning into something stranger, a spire of pure metal, and he stretched the pipes so rust no longer clogged them, and in a whoosh and a rush water spurted out, slowly at first, and then with more vigor, rust-colored water fading to pure clear beauty, and he angled the sprays so that the water arched up into the air, mingling with the lines of the spire and running down its struts until it landed in the basin again. Hank whooped. Erik smiled. It was--not beautiful, but. He had created something, he had made something work again, and it felt. Good.

From above them, Charles watched. When Erik glanced up at him, he couldn’t parse the expression on his face.  
  
  
  
That evening, Charles pressed his fingers against Erik’s temples, after a long hour of sifting through his mindscape, opening closed doors and finding nothing behind them--Charles had described it once as attempting to smooth out the crinkled pages of a botched symphony, but Erik preferred to think of his mind as a maze, a labyrinth, within which was a treasure that would tell him who he was--and stroked a line down his face. “Erik,” he said hesitantly. “Do you… do you want to stay with Hank?”

Erik sat up. “Are you tired of me?” he asked in a small voice.

“No! No. Of course not. I could never--” Charles made a sharp noise of frustration in the back of his throat, and Erik shrunk back. “No. I’m sorry. I just meant. I know you and he have been… getting on. And today, with the fountain--”

Fear spiked through Erik. “I’m sorry. We should’ve asked--”

“No,” Charles said, the faintest of smiles on his face. “No. I’m--glad. It was a good idea, and. I didn’t think of it, because you never used to--but. If you want to play with any of the spare metal bits and bobs you can find lying around this old place, and of course I can get some metalwork materials delivered--I just meant. If you wanted to stay with him, with another omega, instead of an alpha who has… _expectations_ of you, I would understand.” He carded his fingers through Erik’s hair, but Erik could see the way his other hand was clenched in a fist at his side, what these words, gentle and kind as they were, were costing him. “I would have to make sure you were safe. But. If it would make you feel better, to stay with an omega…”

He trailed off. Erik licked his lips. “I want to stay with _you_ ,” he said intently, not sure what it meant, only that it was true. Hank was nice, but--Hank hadn’t dove into the Atlantic Ocean to drag him back to safety after he’d jumped.

“Are you sure?” Charles said, a hitch in his unnaturally steady voice. “Are you sure, because, Erik, if you were only saying that to please me, I--I don’t think I could stand it--”

And Erik pushed out with his thoughts. Charles froze. Charles’s presence in his mind was nothing like Emma’s, all jagged lines and bitter cold; it was more like a faint buzz, like the bees in the garden, like the silence that ringed the symphony before the band struck up the first note. Erik hunted for that presence and pushed his feelings toward it, the mess of confusion that was his head and his desires, the way the only thing he knew was that he wanted Charles close to him, that the nightmares didn’t sear so deep when Charles was close, that the fear of what Sebastian would do to him when he found him didn’t stalk so near behind him when Charles’s hand was in his own. Charles stared at him with wide blue eyes, his pale cheeks shading to pink, and then cleared his throat. His mind stayed wrapped around Erik’s own, though, like the sound of the gardens, like the sound of something about to begin.

“All right,” he said roughly, and cleared his throat. When he spoke again, though, some of the roughness remained, as though it had overwhelmed him so thoroughly that he couldn’t even begin to approximate normality. “All right. You know I’ll keep you safe, right? I will,” he said, graver and more assured than Erik had ever heard him. “I will.”

 _I know you’ll try,_ Erik thought, not sure whether or not Charles could hear it. Either way, it was more than he could remember having, so he tucked the memory close to his heart, in the place in his mind that he thought of as collecting treasures, where he would one day put the memory of who he was alongside this moment: Charles, in the library, swearing that all would be well.  
  
  
  
The days slipped into weeks like that. Charles found him an arc welder and safety equipment within the week, and had his first truckload of scrap metal delivered to a small bare standing structure at the edge of the fields--more a groundskeeper’s cottage than a yard shed--only two days later. Hank came and went, and Charles, the house more or less beaten into a semblance of order, slipped into the study more often to work on various things for the CIA, now that Hank had broken the ice between them and Charles. But he wandered out to the shed often to check on Erik, and the most beautiful smile spread across his face when he saw the scraps of metal writhing in the air and reforming into shapes that Erik struggled to get purchase on mentally. When Erik did, though, manage to turn the _sense_ in his head into something concrete and focused, he would smile, and that made Charles’s grin soften into something much tenderer, something like love.

In the evenings, Erik opened his mind to Charles and let him root through his head. Slowly, slowly, memories were returning. Not much that was concrete--a sandwich eaten on a sunny day in a city with stone-faced buildings and clouds muffling the sun above, the cool press of a gun against his senses as he chambered a bullet--but every now and then Charles would almost-- _trip,_ in his mind, was how Erik thought of it, a soft grunt as though he’d been surprised, and maybe pain would spike through Erik’s head, or maybe something else would jar loose. A kiss, a fierce upswell of emotion.

He remembered reading to Charles. They were in another hotel room, and the cadence of Erik’s voice was in Spanish, and Charles’s eyes were half-closed as his head lolled against Erik’s shoulder, and he could hear the buzz of Charles’s telepathy low at the back of his mind, and he read, and Charles smiled and laughed and snorted in the right places even though he didn’t know Spanish, and when Erik turned the page the shift in his muscles caused a burst of scent to flood his nostrils--

And that’s where the memory would end. It was small, but the realness of it sparkled, like something stuck in the teeth, undeniably present and vaguely annoying. He itched at the place in his mind where the memory had swelled up, but he couldn’t recall anything more, no matter what kind of headache he gave himself pressing on that spot in his mind.

It was his fault, for falling into a rhythm, for becoming careless. He knew that the instant he jarred the table and the vase fell to the ground and shattered.

“No, no, no,” he mumbled under his breath, scooping the jagged shards together--ceramic, damn it--the edges pricked his hands and made him bleed.

“Erik?” Charles called up the stairs, and it made him even more frantic, his breath came faster, faster, as he tried to hide the mess--as though Charles wouldn’t notice the vase missing--his eyes burned with self-recrimination, and he ground his fists into the shards, uncaring of the pain. “Erik!” Charles gasped when he saw him kneeling there, and Erik’s heart skipped a beat and then settled into the rapid drumbeat of an omega who knew that he had fucked up.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can fix it, I didn’t mean to--”

“Erik, what--you’re bleeding, oh my god--”

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, blindly reaching for the shards.

Charles’s hands closed on his wrists, hard, and hauled him back. “Erik, Erik, love, I don’t _care_ about the vase,” he said frantically, a note of awful confusion in his voice, the same note that appeared when Erik was being strange and he was _trying_ to understand but also failing. “It was my mother’s taste anyway, ugly thing--Erik, I don’t care, really, I don’t--please stop, you’re going to hurt yourself, please--”

Erik stopped struggling against him, buried his face in his bloody hands. His heart was pounding, his spine tense, he was drowning in disbelief that he wasn’t going to be punished, he was braced for it and all that adrenaline had nowhere else to go but to escape via his eyes in the form of sobbing tears of relief and self-loathing. God. God, he’d tried _so hard_ not to be a burden, and the moment Charles’s eyes were turned he did something like this--

“Erik, Erik, I don’t care, you’re not a burden, you’re _not,_ ” Charles was saying, and Erik was dully aware that Charles must be in his mind. Charles reached up and Erik flinched away, braced for a blow as he was, and Charles’s expression crumpled--another thing he had yet to hate himself for, all the alpha wanted was to touch him and Erik couldn’t even manage that properly. “Stop. Stop this. Erik, what’s wrong--I would never punish you, certainly not over something as stupid as this--”

“Alpha,” Erik gasped. _Don’t make promises you can’t keep_ , he wanted to scream.

“Erik, Erik,” Charles said, and tears were sliding down his face now, his eyes were red and swollen to match Erik’s own, “I’d never hurt you. _Never._ I swear it. On my parents’ graves. On my own life. On yours.”

 _“Charles,”_ Erik gasped, and reached for him, and Charles crushed him to himself with a fierce and ferocious hug. “I’m sorry,” he choked out through rough tears, though now he was apologizing not for the vase but for everything else, for reminding Charles that life had not always been kind to him as Charles wanted it to be, for causing Charles’s own tears. And the dam broke. 

The memories flooded in. Sebastian’s face twisted in rage. His burning grip on Erik’s wrist as he yanked him closer, as Erik fought him, reaching for any metal around, bullets and paper clips pinging harmlessly off Sebastian’s skin as he absorbed the impact, making his grip on Erik stronger, more immutable. He’d thought he was ready. He’d thought he was ready to face him again, he’d prepared for so long, and the details of that preparation still escaped him, but he could remember the refrain pounding in his head: Not a child anymore. I’m ready for you, Shaw. Not a child anymore. Not helpless anymore. And yet when he’d encountered him, he’d been just as helpless, just as _weak_ , as he’d always been in the face of that overwhelming power.

He’d thought he was ready. That first time Sebastian mounted him, in the bunker, he’d thought he’d been ready to face it, to face whatever Sebastian could throw at him before he inevitably slit his throat and threw his body away like so much garbage. But he hadn’t been. He hadn’t been prepared for the violation, for the feeling of Sebastian forcing his way inside him, for the way he couldn’t catch his breath as Sebastian shook all the composure out of him with each thrust.

He’d thought he was ready. He’d thought he was ready to die, and in fairness, he might have been. But what Sebastian had done had been so much worse. He hadn’t been ready to lose himself. He hadn’t been ready to spend years at Sebastian’s knee, helping him murder and kill, spreading his legs for him at night, enduring his beatings when he miscarried, again and again and again. He hadn’t been ready to lose--

Charles.

Charles, who was staring at him now with tears pouring fully down his cheeks, as though he knew, as though he had been listening to the whole litany of horrors that Erik had suffered, and he very well might have been. Erik buried his face in the crook of Charles’s shoulder, not wanting that penetrating gaze to be aimed at him, stupidly half-thinking that if perhaps Charles didn’t meet his eyes, he couldn’t read his thoughts, couldn’t comb through his awful memories, couldn’t suffer with him. Erik’s hands shook on Charles’s shoulders as he curled up closer. “Come on,” Charles said roughly, “bed,” and he picked him up, supporting Erik’s trembling weight, and carried them both down the hall to Charles’s bedroom, the one they still shared some nights. Erik was grateful that Charles could tell it was another night for bedding down together like cubs, another night when the heat of another person might wash his nightmares away.

Charles drew the blankets around Erik and wrapped his hands with gauze out of the first-aid kit he’d stashed under his bed. “You know,” he said softly, staring at Erik’s hands, “that you could tell me anything. Anything. And I can’t promise I’ll react well--but I want you to know that you can share your burdens with me, always.”

Erik stared at his hands and stuttered out, one anecdote spilling out after another, a jigsaw puzzle of remembered agony,

“He had this collar. Like--a choke chain, like you have for dogs, and--when I was bad he would--he would make me wear it, and he dragged me along after him--and it hurt--and I bent the prongs once, with my power, and he made sure that. That I would never do it again--” and “I miscarried four times and he beat me every time, and every time I thought I was going to die, and I almost welcomed it--” and “He used to say sometimes that he would w-whore me out to the generals he spoke with, as a part of the deals he made, and I knew he never would, he was too possessive for that, but the thought of it--I tried so hard to please him and I never, ever could--”

\--and finally, when his hands had been bandaged, when Charles was kneeling at his feet, his grip on Erik’s wrists sure but not painful, so unlike Sebastian’s hold, his fingers trembling as he looked down at their feet, like if he looked up at Erik he would shatter, Erik whispered, “All I want--what would make me happier than anything else in the world--is to never see him again. To never _think_ about him again. To stay here, with you, in this place, and live my life--”

“You don’t want revenge?” Charles asked softly.

“I’m too broken for revenge,” Erik whispered.

And Charles surged up and caught Erik in his arms, and Erik flinched back but just a little and settled into Charles’s arms, and Charles was weeping, mumbling scattered promises about making sure that Erik would never, _ever_ have to think about him again, that on his life, on his life, Erik, he swore, he would never have to think about him again. And Erik closed his eyes and sank into the embrace. Charles’s arms around him. The scent of protective alpha lingering in the air.

“Apples and sage,” he murmured, and that was the last thing he said before the exhaustion of emotion dragged him downwards into sleep. But before that, he spent a long time rocked in Charles’s arms, relishing the gentle back-and-forth of an alpha who he, against all odds, was beginning to trust… in his own halting, stuttering way.  
  
  
  
Another night--

His head in Charles’s lap. Charles’s fingers carding through his hair. The vague sense of something shifting between his eyes, and Charles humming, a little tune he said was the sound of Erik’s mind when he was meditating, though Erik still had trouble picturing his music metaphors.

And then--

\--searing blackout pain. Erik screamed. It felt like Sebastian’s touch when he was channeling power, it felt like drowning--

Charles reeled backwards, shouting, and Erik tumbled off of his lap onto the floor. He clutched his head, fingers digging into his scalp, trying to burrow into the sharp point of fire that lay between his eyes. He shouted, and sobbed, and Charles reached for him desperately but he scrambled backwards, but at last Charles managed to touch his forehead and shout, “ _Sleep!”_ and Erik did, at last, still trembling with pain even as he dropped into unconsciousness.  
  
  
  
He woke in bed. Charles must have carried him up. He turned his head to see Charles perched on the edge of the bed, looking very pale and wan and holding an icepack to his own head. When he noticed Erik, he set it down and leaned over, his expression huge and concerned, floating like a moon in the haze of auras and bright blinking spots that dotted Erik’s vision. “Are you all right?” he asked, and Erik winced. Charles’s voice, normally so soothing, grated. Charles seemed to notice; when he spoke again, his voice was noticeably softer, though it still set off clanging bells in Erik’s head. “How are… how are you feeling?”

“Hurts,” Erik managed. “Thirsty.” Charles, looking stricken, brought a cup of water to his lips. Erik drank deeply. The water hurt his teeth, but soothed his parched throat, which was something.

“I’m sorry,” Charles said, sounding on the verge of tears.

“Why?” Erik mumbled.

“I--your mind, Erik, it’s so--” He scrubbed at his face. It seemed as though he were struggling to compose himself. “Erik, there’s _so much_ trauma there. That telepath--she had you for _years,_ and there are. Layers on layers of conditioning and modifications and aversions and _pain_ , and. Even if _I_ had years, I don’t know if I’d be able to bring you back all the way, to bring all your memories back--” Erik’s stomach dropped low in his body. He stared at the ceiling. They hadn’t dusted for a while. A gossamer line of spiderweb stretched from the eaves to the windowsill; he would have to fix that. He thought about living in this room for years, for the rest of his life, and--didn’t know how to feel. What was his life without discipline, without, as Charles had said, pain? His last few weeks here stretched like a idyll, beautiful and perfect but unsustainable, and when he tried to imagine a year of this, five years of this, he came up blank. Surely Charles would find some use for him. Surely Charles would-- “Erik,” Charles said softly, bringing him back to himself, “she… left _traps_ in your mind. Ensured that… even if I found you again, all I’d be able to cause you is pain. It’s possible that with time, they’ll wear off…”

“And it’s possible they won’t,” Erik finished for him hoarsely, and Charles nodded miserably.

“I…” he said thickly. “I don’t think I should dig around in your head anymore, Erik. I don’t want to hurt you. The last thing I’ve ever wanted is to hurt you.”

 _You haven’t,_ Erik opened his mouth to say, but the motion as he lifted his head slashed through him with agony, and he fell back, subsiding. When he opened his eyes again, Charles looked very white, and he was twisting his fingers together, and at last Erik understood this final cruelty of Sebastian’s, to make _Charles_ be the one to hurt him, Charles who had never struck him, had never raped him, had never _hurt_ him, except like this. Erik reached out for Charles’s fidgeting fingers, trapped them within his own. “All right,” was what he ended up saying, and Charles’s expression bubbled over with such relief that Erik abruptly realized that if he had pushed, Charles would have let him, though it would have destroyed him to hurt Erik again, in full knowledge that he could. “All right,” he said instead, and tucked Charles’s hand very close to his own face, and closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of Charles, apples and sage and protection.  
  
  
  
Hank brought him seeds. Lavender, peonies, daylilies--hard-wearing perennials that it would be difficult to kill. Erik scattered the lavender on the edges of the grounds and unearthed the brick-edged gardens that had been long overgrown with weed and grass. He planted plain rows of each of the flower varietals Hank and brought, and tended them carefully. “Next time,” Hank said, “I’ll bring vegetable seeds,” and Erik had smiled at him and asked if he wanted to take up a spade and help, and Charles didn’t bring them in until twilight had coasted over the Catskills and even invited Hank to dinner that time, though Hank, blushing, had declined.

The lavender rooted quickly, and within the month he was watching purple buds emerge from the stalks, tinting the edges of the Xavier estate with the colors of just-dawn and mostly-dusk. He navigated the fields with a gardening hose snaking behind him and Charles’s telepathy buzzing at the back of his mind--not pressing, just checking for his presence as he traipsed around the grounds--pulled weeds where they sprouted in his wake but mostly left the long plains of calf-high grass alone. He stooped down every now and then to smooth the ground where the lavender thrust upward, prickly and proud, and that was where the agent found him, after a particularly nauseating morning.

“Erik,” she called, and he froze, one hand digging into the soil at his feet, the other planted behind him for steadiness. Ice raced down his veins. It wasn’t Emma--the voice of the woman speaking to him now was higher, sweeter--but in this place, this _sanctuary_ , no one should know his name, those who did spoke to him only through Charles. He looked up, eyes darting to meet the keen, dark eyes of the CIA agent--MacTaggart, he remembered--who had taken Charles, in custody, to Miami that night when Erik had been tossed overboard and latched onto Charles like some kind of flotation device to keep from drowning in the dark and vicious waters.

“Erik,” she said, moving closer. There were four men behind her, big men wearing suits and with their sidearms displayed prominently on their hips. Their arms were crossed and they hadn’t yet reached for a gun--and Erik could deflect _bullets_ , why was he so afraid of them--he caught the scent of alpha on the wind and shuddered. He took a halting step backwards; she held out a hand placatingly. “I just want to talk. Is that okay? We can just talk.”

“I shouldn’t speak to you,” he said very quietly, staring at the ground as he inched further backwards.

“Why?” MacTaggart asked shrewdly. “Because Charles wouldn’t like it?”

Erik flinched. It was true, it was true--even above the buzzing in his ears, the sound of terror fizzing through his veins, he could tell--Charles was going to be so _angry_ \--

“You don’t have to be afraid of Charles,” MacTaggart was saying. “We can protect you. We can keep you safe from Shaw, too. All you have to do is help us. Just tell us what you know.”

Charles was going to be so _angry_. But not with him. Not this time.

Erik straightened his spine and said softly, but with more emphasis to it, “You shouldn’t be here. You should leave.”

“Erik,” MacTaggart said, and there was a hint of patronization in her voice now. “We’re here to help you. Believe it or not, we just want what’s best for you--”

“So do I,” Erik said sharply. “And I want you to _leave_.”

One of the men advanced on him and, like an instinct, Erik thought about using the gardening hose to wind around his feet, trip him up, to snake around his arms and prevent him from reaching for his sidearm. He blinked, and the impulse was gone; he stumbled backwards, the hose lying limp and lifeless in the grass. But it was like one of the memories that Charles had stirred up, before he’d decided that it was too dangerous to continue poking through Erik’s mind like they had been--a flash of the Erik that had been. The Erik that had been, Erik realized, would have fought.

The Erik that was--wasn’t that brave. He could see what he would have done, how he would’ve disabled the men and woman in front of him, but the gulf of will to actually reach out and do it was absent--it had been so long since he’d used his powers for anything that Sebastian hadn’t specifically commanded--the fountain with Hank a few weeks ago had been the first time, the very first time, in a very long time--and now the idea of taking up arms against someone, even trespassers on Charles’s property, was a prospect too terrifying to look at directly, like the sun. MacTaggart snarled, looking very much like an alpha then in spite of her stature and the omega-scent wafting off of her. “Charles Xavier thinks he can hide out in his posh little mansion with _valuable evidence_ ,” she said, taking fast steps toward him, and Erik had the feeling that she was not talking to him at all anymore, “and then has the _gall_ to keep you away from us? You’re coming with us, Erik, and you’re going to tell us everything you know about Sebastian Shaw, and if you’re _lucky_ we won’t lock you up for the rest of your life for aiding and abetting a known terrorist--”

Erik flinched backward, like a cornered animal, at the name. _On my life, on my_ life _, Erik, I swear, you’ll never have to think about him again._ But not even Charles could protect him from the greater cruelties of the world. On his next step, his back struck an elm tree, and in the blink of an eye he was cornered. MacTaggart advanced on him until she was very, very close, glaring at him as though if she tried hard enough she could, like Charles, drill through his mind and lay bare all his secrets, though he didn’t think she’d be very gentle about it. “This doesn’t have to be difficult, Erik,” she said, more softly now, though with the same level of threat pulsing underneath the words. The men began to draw their weapons.

 _Charles,_ he thought, not with desperation, with a quiet sort of despair. _Charles, please._

_I’m here, my love._

And the men froze where they stood.

It took MacTaggart a moment to realize her backup was missing. She drew herself up to her full petite height and spun toward the mansion; Erik glanced over his shoulder and realized, with a rush of knee-weakening relief, that Charles was striding through the grass, looking savage and half-mad with anger. His sleeves were pushed up haphazardly above his elbows and sweat from the hot midday sun stuck his fringe to his forehead and he looked _livid,_ and Erik fell gratefully in behind him, because for the first time he could trust, instinctively, that that anger was directed at someone else entirely. MacTaggart’s lips peeled back in a snarl.

“Moira,” Charles said coldly, coming to a stop in front of Erik. Shielding him with his own body--he was slighter than Erik but broader of shoulder, and with his fingers pressed to his temple Erik felt he was possibly in the safest place in the entire fucking world. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

MacTaggart scowled. “You can trick all my superiors into thinking that there’s nothing important about him,” she snapped, “but _I know better._ I was there on the boat, Charles. I saw you almost kill yourself to get to him. Who is he? What is his connection to Sebastian Shaw?” Her voice softened. “You remember Sebastian Shaw, right? You turned yourself into Interpol to get closer to him. You hate him, as much as I do. What happened to you, Charles? Why are you hiding away here, instead of _helping_ us, getting your revenge--whatever that revenge may be for?”

“There are,” Charles bit out, “more important things than revenge.”

“Like what?” MacTaggart asked, still coaxing, but a thundercloud had descended over Charles’s features and he strode up to her. He wasn’t much taller than her, but the shadow that had fallen over his face was terrible, and Erik saw MacTaggart flinch back and look instinctively to her back-up, who were still slack-jawed, frozen, their hands halfway to their sidearms.

“Leave, Moira,” Charles snarled. “Leave and never come back, before I _make_ you. We’re still on the same side, for now, so I’ll do you the courtesy of not leaving you and your men _drooling vegetables_ on the front step of Westchester County Hospital.”

MacTaggart reached out for him, caressed his hand with the air of one familiar with a lover’s touch. “Charles, remember what we shared--”

Charles caught her wrist with an iron grip; she cried out at the way he held her, pinching on a nerve, Erik could tell, though he wasn’t sure where that knowledge had come from, nor the certainty that he had been the one to teach Charles that hold. “Look into my eyes, Moira,” he said, rough, unforgiving. “Read my mind.”

MacTaggart looked straight into Charles’s blue, blue eyes, and whatever she saw there made her blanch and yank her wrist out of his hold. Charles was looking at her coldly, without remorse or even much interest. Erik wondered if they’d slept together while Charles had thought he was dead, then wondered if it mattered, when Charles stood between him and her now, his shoulders squared as if to do battle, his protection laying heavy and thick on Erik like a cloak, like a blanket pulled up around him shielding him from the world. He jerked his head at the men, and, as one, they came forward and laid their guns at Charles’s feet; Erik flinched, but Charles took his wrist--gently, not like he’d taken MacTaggart’s, and threaded his fingers through Erik’s own, and steadied him. The men backed away slowly, retreating back to the thicket out of which they’d came, on the other side of which, Erik could feel now, was a car idling in the tall grass.

MacTaggart watched them go, a cold fury in her eyes. “Go,” Charles said again, a finality in his tone now, and she went, slinking after them, shooting speculative and angry looks back at where Erik clung to Charles, who was limned with sunlight as he stood straight-backed in the midday heat.

“Thank you,” Erik whispered softly.

Charles turned to him and swept him into his arms, not checking to see whether Erik flinched first, and to Erik’s surprise he didn’t, just settled into the warmth of Charles’s embrace, sunnier and stronger than the stellar body above their heads. “I’m sorry,” Charles murmured into the hollow of his throat. “She should’ve never gotten that close to you. I’ll--I’ll keep a better watch on the roads from now on. Make sure that no one’s coming up them who shouldn’t be. That no one can get near you with ill intent.”

“It’s all right,” Erik said softly. “You came to get me.”

“Erik,” Charles said tightly, “I’ll _always_ come to get you,” and they stood there, holding each other in the golden sunlight, the scent of lavender rising all around them, for a long, long time.  
  
  
  
It was undeniable, now, that Erik was sick.

He barely ate anymore; anything more flavorful than bread and honey made him nauseous. Charles doted over him, tried to keep him in bed, brought him chicken soup (made from a can; Charles was concerned, not a miracle worker), perched on the edge of the bed and read to him, though Erik had no fever, though he tried to convince Charles that he was fine, but for the nausea which rose up at odd hours of the day and crashed over him like an ocean wave.

It made him nervous, not being able to leave his bedroom. He _knew_ it was different, he could hardly compare the tall dusty ceilings here with the low wide spaces of the boat, Sebastian’s taste in sleek modern furniture compared to the creaking old wood of Charles’s mansion, but lying in bed, waiting for Charles to come and mark the passing of his days, all he could remember was being locked in the bedroom for days while Sebastian’s business was in a critical stage, receiving meals shoved into his hands by Azazel or Emma, only really connecting with someone else when Sebastian came to take his pleasure in him, for whatever connection that was worth. The first time he made that comparison, Charles blanched, and tried to let him go down to the little cottage on the grounds to work on his sculptures, but he hovered so badly that Erik eventually took pity on him and returned to the bedroom to be coddled and cosseted. 

Charles brought him little scraps of metal, and he began to make a tiny copy of the mansion, about half the size of a doll’s house, complete with corridors and hidden passages hidden behind bookshelves and all of the little tricks to the house that Charles told him stories about. Charles played with it, fascinated, grinning with delight when Erik made the bookshelves swing back and reveal little tunnels, when he made the floorboards slide up to reveal a hiding space just the size of a little boy under the floor, when he added little touches like copper sandwiches on the kitchen counter, a nickel chess set in the library. “I’ve never loved this place so much,” Charles told him, “and it’s because of you, it’s always all because of you.”

Erik smiled wanly and nibbled at his toast. His stomach was churning, but less so than usual today. He thought he felt up to a walk through the gardens--the lavender must be wilting--but when he stood, spots danced before his eyes, and he swayed, feeling the nausea rush over him again--he groped for the bed, but it vanished under his fingers--the last thing he saw before he tipped over the edge into unconsciousness was Charles’s panicked blue eyes, and the last thing he felt was Charles’s arms around him as he drifted unwillingly into a wine-dark sleep.  
  
  
  
Erik opened his eyes.

There was a faint tapping coming from his left. He turned his head and caught sight of Charles, his face ghost-white, his leg dancing up and down--the tapping he’d heard was Charles’s foot against the floorboard--his fingers knotted together as he stared into the distance. Erik reached out, brushed a hand against Charles’s clasped hands--Charles jumped, and whirled to look at him, eyes scanning Erik wildly. Assessing the color in his cheeks, his sleepy, hesitant smile. “What happened?” Erik asked.

“Erik--” Charles took a deep breath. He reached out, held Erik’s hand. “You fainted. I--I had a doctor in--he said--”

Erik bit his lip. Charles looked stricken--Erik ran a soothing thumb over Charles’s knuckles. He wondered if it was bad. It certainly looked as though it was bad. He registered the possibility with a distant interest, worried more about Charles’s obvious pallor than his own bodily integrity. “It’ll be all right,” Erik told him.

Charles shook his head violently. He clenched his eyes shut, but tears beaded in his eyelashes anyway. “Erik--when was your last heat?”

Erik frowned. He remembered hands on his hips, Sebastian’s smile pressing against his cheek. “A few weeks before…” He cast his eyes downward. “You know. You found me.”

“Erik…” Charles took a deliberate, steady breath. “The doctor thinks--you’re four months pregnant.”

And Erik’s thoughts all--stopped.

Charles was running a soothing hand down Erik’s forearm. “It’s all right,” he said unconvincingly. “The doctor--prescribed some vitamins, and said that you need to eat, even if you don’t feel like it. That’s why you fainted, the lack of nutrition. And he gave me some--pamphlets--” Charles rummaged blindly for the bedside table, but his eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Erik’s, searching for a sign, of some indicator of how Erik needed him to react. Erik was frozen, though, not even sure how he himself was reacting. He felt very cold. Was that shock? His hands were shaking. Was that fear?

“Pregnant?” he asked softly.

Charles nodded, and a terrible look came into his eyes, a look of ancient sadness, but Erik was hardly about to parse it, so consumed as he was with his own body, which suddenly felt foreign to him. Pregnant. He had been pregnant four times before, and each time lost the baby; and each time, when he’d learned of his pregnancy, he’d felt the sudden awareness of a little body growing inside of him, a little life utterly dependent on his own. And four months. That was longer than he’d ever lasted before, by a little, and he hadn’t had any of the terrible pains that preceded miscarriage. It was supposed to get safer, as the pregnancy went on, wasn’t it?

Maybe he would carry this one to term.

He thought, with a sudden terrible shock, that this was what Sebastian had always wanted, and he wasn’t even here to see it. “Pregnant,” he repeated, and Charles groped for his hand, holding it tightly, his eyes still turned on Erik. Erik could tell that he wasn’t letting himself feel, probably hadn’t let himself feel since he heard the news. Was so focused on Erik, on what he needed, that he hadn’t had his own time to--mourn, or whatever an alpha did when he learned his omega was pregnant by another alpha’s seed.

“Erik,” Charles said carefully. “Do you… do you want to keep the baby?”

And the world stopped again. “Please,” Erik gasped, grasping convulsively for Charles’s hand, “please, no, don’t hurt it, I’ll do anything--”

A look of pure horror crossed Charles’s face. “Erik, god--”

“Please, please, I know it’s not yours but I’ll--I’ll take care of it, you won’t even have to see it--I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t hurt it, please--”

“Erik, no, oh my god, I would never,” Charles said, and tears were already threatening. “God, Erik, why would you even think--”

“That’s what he did,” Erik whispered, “Sebastian.”

“What he did?” Charles asked, and he didn’t see, didn’t see the shape of it, but Erik did, and all at once there were hands on his body, a burning hand pressed to his stomach, Charles hadn’t seen him undressed all the way so far except in the perfect darkness of night that time Erik had tried to seduce him, hadn’t seen the handprint scarred onto his abdomen, the damage that the doctors said might be permanent, might prevent him from ever carrying a child to term. Erik remembered the screaming, the screaming that tore from his throat that hardly even sounded human anymore, he remembered trying to get away, cringing into Sebastian’s iron grip as he burned and burned and burned, he remembered when the pain and pressure turned to terrible, rolling cramps that was his first experience with miscarriage, he remembered Sebastian’s dark laughter as he petted his hair, dried his wet face, told him, _“See, schatz, I said I’d take care of it,”_ he remembered loss. He remembered the terrible emptiness that roiled inside him, even though he’d only known of the little life there for a few days, the way he’d grown used to thinking of himself as two, as a person and a clinging little spark. 

“What he did,” Erik said roughly, his voice cracked and shot through with agony, “to o-our baby.”

“Our…?”

It took him a long, long moment to understand, not because he was stupid but because the idea was too much to bear, too terrible to wrap his mind around. His eyes understood first. The tears that leaked out, while Charles’s expression was still one of confusion, rolled down his face and plashed onto Erik’s hand where Charles was holding it tightly. “Our…?” Charles repeated again, and his eyes drifted to Erik’s stomach, where he had carefully avoiding looking all this time. As thought the thought were unthinkable, which, in fairness, it was.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect it,” Erik gasped, and Charles’s hand clenched on Erik’s and Erik cringed away, bracing for a blow--

\--but then Charles drew him close, tenderly, tenderly, and he was crying, he was sobbing, but his touch was nothing but gentle on Erik’s skin. Charles’s shaking hand drifted to Erik’s abdomen, and he stroked the bare skin under his shirt, gingerly, gently, as though the child in Erik’s belly _were_ that lost child that was both of them. And Erik was crying too, great sobbing gulps, as he allowed himself something that he had never had: time to mourn, to mourn for each of the children he had lost on that boat, from the very first to the very last, and he laid a hand over Charles’s which was tracing little circles on his skin and Charles immediately turned his hand and captured his fingers in his own, and brought him in close. Erik sniffled, and Charles got up from his chair to seat himself on the bed, drawing Erik close under his arm; Erik put his head over Charles’s heart, hearing the soothing rhythm of his heartbeat, that lullaby that rocked him to sleep some nights, of which tonight was going to be one, he suspected. 

“I’d never thought,” Charles whispered. “I never imagined--”

Erik wondered if he’d ever thought. If he’d ever imagined children with Charles. “Did I?” he asked, through slow measured breaths designed to quiet his sobs--he’d gotten quite good at self-soothing over the years.

“I--I don’t know,” Charles said quietly. Dim sunlight came from the pulled-closed curtains and sparkled off his wet cheeks. “You told me once… that all you wanted when this was all done was to be my mate. My real mate, you said, even though I always thought of you as my _real mate_ even then. I don’t know if you were thinking of children. I certainly--it didn’t even cross my mind, I was so happy. You were--are--my whole world, I never needed anything else to fulfill me. And the lives we lived--it was hard to imagine a child. It was hard to imagine settling down at all, though the thought of it… sustained me. You and I, in a little flat somewhere.” Charles sniffled. “Now I can’t stop picturing it. A child. A bassinet… a lullaby.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik whispered again, and Charles clutched Erik fiercely to him.

“Don’t, don’t,” he repeated like a mantra. “It wasn’t your fault, Erik, it wasn’t your fault--” but Erik had fallen into a spiral of _sorry, sorry_ , and it wasn’t until Charles sobbed and said, “I forgive you, Erik, it’s all right, I forgive you,” that he finally started to quiet. He knew better. It _was_ his fault, that he hadn’t been strong enough, strong enough to fight Sebastian and Emma when they’d taken him apart in that crypt, strong enough to protect Charles’s child when it had been so small and utterly dependent on him, strong enough to die with that child, die protecting it. But forgiveness. Forgiveness he could understand.

At one point, Charles tried to leave to get him something to eat, but Erik clung to him, and he settled back down. The light faded into twilight, then into night, and Erik eventually closed his eyes, too exhausted even to dream. He thought he heard Charles whispering--not to him, though, just to the air--but the words escaped him. He felt Charles draw a hand over his belly, gently, gently, tracing the scar Sebastian had left. Felt more tears prick their way onto his skin. But Charles had forgiven him. He repeated that in his mind. Charles had forgiven him for being unforgivably weak, and slowly, slowly, the world faded into grayscale, then into sleep.  
  
  
  
They didn’t speak much over the next few days. When Charles had something to say, he sent a pulse of telepathy into Erik’s mind, more feeling than words--concern, often, and a desire for Erik to eat or rest or drink--he read aloud to Erik some more, but both of their hearts were not really into it. Charles found the folic acid and iron supplements the doctor had insisted he take and plied Erik with them, along with cheese and crackers and honeyed bread and soups and the ever-present sandwiches.

The supplements helped, as did Charles’s insistence that he eat even when the nausea was spiking, and slowly he regained his strength. He could sit up and stand without feeling that swoony feeling of impending unconsciousness. He obsessively checked his belly for the bump that he had never lasted long enough in a pregnancy to have, and Charles’s touches became more concentrated in that area as well, though he continued to stroke a hand through Erik’s hair and rub a hand over Erik’s back and stare at Erik’s lips like he wanted to kiss them. Erik wondered whether Charles would ever grow tired of taking care of him; it didn’t seem so, but surely there were other things he wanted to do, working with the CIA or with Hank, whose visits had been suspended while Erik was abed, so he struggled out of bed perhaps sooner than he really ought to in order to return to the garden and the cottage-shed. He sat there, under the gleaming metal of the pieces of scrap he was in the middle of transforming, resting a hand on his belly, and thinking thoughts about nothing in particular. Names, perhaps. 

He caught Charles crying sometimes, in the bathroom, glaring into the mirror as though it had challenged him personally, silent tears dripping off his nose, off his jaw, not having bothered to wipe them away. The second time it happened, Erik padded up to him and rubbed a tentative hand over his back. Without looking away, Charles raised his arm, beckoning him closer, and Erik insinuated himself against Charles’s side. Charles clutched him like if he let go he would lose him again.  
  
  
  
Erik’s strength returned gradually. He was sick sometimes, near-fainting at others, but he learned better how to conceal these spells from Charles, and Charles eventually began to invite him to the library for chess again, though this time without the well-aged whiskey from his father’s old liquor cabinet. What changed was that Charles seemed to want him out of the mansion more often; he often hustled Erik straight from breakfast into the garden, and led him by the arm into the study at night, where they no longer attempted to pry at the corners of Erik’s mind but just played and talked quietly and Erik remembered, or rather understood, how he could’ve fallen in love with Charles, inasmuch as he understood a thing so elusive as love. He would have worried that Charles no longer wanted him now that he knew the truth of his ruined and broken body, but Charles smiled at him with such genuine pleasure, laughed so broadly when Erik checkmated him, that these suspicions wisped into thin air as soon as they were had. If there was one thing Erik struggled to doubt, it was that Charles loved him.

He found out why Charles had been so secretive and cagey about three weeks later. He still wasn’t _showing_ precisely, but there was a solidness to his stomach that hadn’t been there before, the faintest change in shape. Beaming, Charles came down to find him in the garden shed, where he was standing well back, watching the arc welder hum and spark at a thick sheaf of metal he was thinking of turning into something like an abstract sculpture of lavender bending in a hard breeze. “I’ll wait till you’re done,” he said, but he was bouncing on the balls of his feet, so Erik smiled and set down what he had--hard blocks of iron flowing into something organic, something almost familiar, carrying the scent of lavender in the memory--and held out his hand for Charles. Charles took it eagerly, tugging him along gently but purposefully. They stepped into the cool of the mansion, up the stairs, the windows of which had been scrubbed recently--Erik wondered when Charles had had the time to do that--down the hall to Erik and Charles’s rooms. Charles led Erik to the one across from Erik’s, and said, a little nervously, “This used to be my playroom. I thought--well, see for yourself.”

Erik pushed the door open--and stopped.

The walls had been stripped of their wallpaper and painted goldenrod yellow, with swirls of a paler yellow rising and falling steadily, a sine wave as regular as the ocean was not. A thick fleecy rug of the same color had been spread on the floor. An old rocking horse, probably from Charles’s childhood, had been given a fresh coat of paint and dominion over the window, where a comfortable window seat had been set up, with cushions and pillows of the same sunny yellow as the rest of the room. Stuffed toys spilled out from a toybox. And in the center, a bassinet, that if Erik had been concentrating he would’ve felt from outside the room, fitted with a plain mat and a baby blanket hanging over the side. Erik stepped into the room, feeling dazed. He took a slow circuit of the bassinet, taking in all the details; the way the molding had been meticulously painted the lighter shade of yellow, the stitching on the cushions, the gauzy lightness of the curtains.

“The baby book the librarian pointed me to said yellow was a nice, neutral color that connotes cheer and happiness if you didn’t know the sex,” Charles said nervously. “And--and everything is secondhand, we can change it if you want, except for the crib--I thought you would like metal, so you could tell whether everything was all right--I ordered it new, it just came today--spent all afternoon trying to put it together, too, blasted thing--”

“You did this?” Erik asked.

“I--yes,” Charles said hesitantly. “Yes, for--for you. And the baby.”

Erik ran a questing hand along the steel lines of the bassinet. He felt--he felt--he didn’t know what he felt. Something great and awful was swelling up inside of him. He touched the slight solidness in his belly. “You really want… me? And it? Together?”

“Yes, I--yes, god, Erik. I’m never letting you or--or it--go again.”

To his horror, Erik sniffled, and then started to feel tears sting at his eyes. “Oh, god,” Charles cried in dismay, “oh, god, I’m so sorry, it’s awful, isn’t it, I should’ve asked--we can get rid of it all, start over again--only I think the location is good, right across from your bedroom--do you. Do you want to move? We can move to a different floor, or if you want me to stay in a different wing--”

“No,” Erik gasped, “no, Charles, it’s-- _perfect,”_ and then the flood came, damn the hormones flooding his body right now, making him weak and wanting, making him such a goddamn _burden_ , and Charles’s arms came around him and he was hushing him and in that moment, with sunlight spilling through the light fluttering curtains and landing on their hands, touching on the rim of the bassinet, everything was fine. Everything was perfect.  
  
  
  
He asked Hank, eventually. There was an unmistakable swell to him now, and though neither he or Charles had told Hank, he wasn’t an idiot, and figured it out fairly quickly, whether from the way Charles rushed to Erik every time he stumbled, or from the way Erik rested a hand on his belly now more often than not, or simply from Erik’s changing diet and body shape. “I want to…” he struggled to articulate how the nursery had made him _feel_ , how he wanted to give Charles that feeling in return, how he feared he was failing. “I… if you wanted… to be good to an alpha, how would you?”

Hank peered at him over his glasses. He was taking apart the sandwich he was eating--it had taken the poor man a month to tell Charles that he didn’t like his with ranch dressing, and Charles still forgot half the time--laying it out on plastic wrap in meticulous little layers. “It would depend, I think, on the alpha,” he said after a moment. Erik drooped. “Charles might like--something you made,” Hank added kindly. “Maybe one of your metal things? Or,” he said, when Erik hmmed noncommittally, “you could--learn a new skill. Knitting, maybe. I knit, it helps me think--” he flushed. “It, uh. Gives me something to do with. With my feet. While I’m working on something else with my hands.”

Hank dug in the cab of his truck and pulled out a spare pair of needles. Erik examined them, appreciative of their sleek lines, the way they tapered to elegant points; he smoothed out a nick in one of them as Hank watched, enthralled. They felt cool and precise as daggers in his hands. Hank adjusted his grip, then dug in the cab until he found a spare spool of yarn. They sat in the grass by Hank’s truck, whip-poor-wills singing their creaking songs in the air above them, as Hank demonstrated how a knit stitch worked: one needle inserted into the loop of yarn on the other, the thread wrapped around, and then the stitch added to the neat line of knitted material drifting to the right. And again, and again. Hank worked quickly, the clack of his needles almost too fast for the eye to keep up with, but when Erik commented on it, he blushed. “I’m faster with my feet,” he confessed with the air of a man sharing a highly embarrassing secret. “More practice. But I’ve always been good at the kind of thing that requires a lot of dexterity. You should see me with a crochet needle.”

That evening, Erik hunched over the pair of needles and thick sheaf of yarn Hank had lent him in the windowseat of the library as he waited for Charles to come upstairs and perhaps ask him for a game of chess, or else offer to read to Erik when what he really wanted was for the two of them to take turns reading to each other, as they once had before… everything. He struggled with piercing the loop through with the free needle, and when he tried to pull the stitch onto the needle he met resistance that Hank hadn’t. Hank had suggested making Charles a scarf, a traditional courting gift for alphas from their omegas; traditional, Erik thought a little bitterly, because it required almost no skill, and yet Erik was still somehow failing at it. He stabbed a needle into the next loop of yarn and yanked hard enough that four or five loops went flying off the needle, and the yarn started to unwind; he made a quiet noise of frustration and tried to pick up the stitches like Hank had showed him.

“Are you… knitting?”

Erik looked up, startled. He hadn’t heard Charles creep closer to him, peering curiously at the project in his hands. Charles was beaming, though, so Erik battled down the ugly flush that threatened to engulf his cheeks and ears and mumbled, “Yes. Hank was teaching me…”

“Not using your powers?” Charles asked inquisitively.

“No, I… I tried, but… Hank said I should get used to the rhythm of knitting by hand before I try to ‘automate’ it,” Erik said, remembering the tangled, lumpy mess that had resulted when he’d first tried to knit with his powers instead of his hands. At least the mess of dropped stitches in his lap now was an improvement, if not much of one.

Charles glanced down at the way Erik had balled a fist into the four or five inches of knitting he’d already accomplished and smiled ruefully. “Would you like help?” he asked warmly. He sat himself on the window seat next to Erik, and when Erik nodded placed his hands on Erik’s own and began to guide him. “You’re holding the yarn too tightly,” he said, gently, and deftly picked up the stitches and demonstrated a looser stitch that added to the length and softness of the finished material. “Like this, see?”

“I didn’t know you knew how to knit.”

“My nanny taught me,” Charles said. “She tried to teach my sister first, actually, but she never stood still long enough for her to catch her and force knitting needles on her. I liked it, though, it was meditative. She didn’t teach me any useful skills, like how to darn a sock, but--you taught me that eventually. It’s been a while… I’m actually surprised I remember what to do. What are you knitting, anyway?”

Erik mumbled, “I wanted to make a scarf for you.” Charles fumbled a stitch.

“Oh--well--I mean--you know you don’t have to court me, right?” Charles said, his eyes intent on picking up the stitch he’d dropped, color suffusing his face. “I’m a sure thing. I’m already yours.”

“I--” Erik flushed, his color matching Charles’s. Charles said it so _simply_ , like it was so easy a thing, for an alpha to declare himself an omega’s entirely. For Charles to say that he was _his._ He hadn’t owned anything in--a long, long time. “That’s not--I just wanted.” He struggled for words. It seemed so _easy_ for Charles to be open and kind with him, whereas Erik fumbled the simplest of sentiments: _I just wanted to make you happy._ “The nursery. I wanted. To thank you.”

Charles was quiet for a while. “Erik,” he said eventually, “what I do for you and--and the baby, it’s not something that needs to be paid back.”

Erik tapped his fingers on his thigh, anxious. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just. I wanted to make you feel. The way you made me feel.”

That made Charles favor him with a smile, glowing warm like the fire in the hearth. He finished the row Erik had been on, and then gestured for Erik to hold the needles; he wrapped his hand’s around Erik’s and guided them in the looser stitch. To his chagrin, Erik did find it was easier to manipulate the needles like this. “Smooth,” Charles murmured. “The needles running over each other like water.” He watched Erik knit the next row with satisfaction, then nodded. He hesitated before he said, “If you wanted to make me something, Erik, I’d wear it with pride. But your next effort… maybe you could make a blanket. For the baby.”

Erik liked knitting. He liked the way it held his eyes, so he didn’t have to meet Charles’s blue, blue gaze when he said… _things like that._ “You really care, don’t you?” he said, the words slipping out before he could bite down on his tongue to keep them there.

“About you? Of course. About it? I… yes. Erik, yes. How could I not love a part of you?” Hesitantly, he reached out, a hand hovering over the faint, faint swell of Erik’s belly. “Can I?” Erik nodded jerkily. Slowly, slowly, Charles pressed his hand against the bump and sighed. He was curled close enough to Erik to hold him, to place his hands on his as he showed him how to knit, to sigh into his ear like a lover. Charles ran gentle fingers down the side of Erik’s bump, his hand skirting over Erik’s shirt so gently he barely felt it. “Whether… whether you stay with me or not, they’ll never want for anything. Neither of you will. I had all this money,” Charles blew impatiently at the fringe of his hair, “all this money, and it was never good for anything, and at last I’m glad of it, I’m glad that at last this useless house and my useless trust fund have a _purpose,_ now that there is you. You and them.” He pressed a kiss to the side of Erik’s forehead. Erik shuddered under the touch. “And if you want… if you would want me to, I would--I would be honored. If you let me take care of it… like a father would. Like your mate.”

“Charles,” Erik gasped, and he dropped the knitting on his lap and buried his face in Charles’s hair, he was too overwhelmed to even try to meet Charles’s eyes. Charles made soft soothing noises, but there was a tension in his shoulders, and Erik got the impression that this was something Charles had wanted to ask him for a long time, but had only gotten up the courage to do now. “Charles, I--yes. Yes, I want that. I want that so much--”

Charles tilted his head and Erik could feel the hot wet drip of tears off the brim of his nose onto Erik’s collarbone. “Oh, good,” he said, his voice surprisingly steady for how thick it was. He ran his fingers along the slight curve of Erik’s belly again. “Good, then.”

“What do you want?” Erik asked, desperate to get Charles to look at him, to smile up at him. He petted the thickly woven fabric of the scarf that he had managed so far anxiously. That was the kind of thing expectant parents asked their partners, wasn’t it?

“What?”

“Do you want a boy or a girl?” Erik tried again.

And it did the trick; Charles looked up at him, and the astonishment he felt at being asked shone out of his face like light, and then at last his face split into a crooked grin. “A--I wouldn’t know what to do with a girl, would you?” he said, with a laugh as crooked as his smile.

“No,” Erik confessed. “But you said--your sister--”

“That is true,” Charles said, smiling. “I suppose I have a _very little_ idea of what to do with a girl. A boy would be easier, though. I’d tell him to grow up exactly like you, except perhaps with a little less knifework. Well, I suppose I could tell a girl that, too,” he said with a warm laugh. Erik blushed, his hands moving from his knitting to the curve of his belly, thinking that he’d never been anyone’s _role model_ before, much less a little girl’s, and he suspected he’d be quite bad at it. “And you? A boy or a girl?”

Erik shrugged. When he thought of the child, he couldn’t see very far beyond the tiny squalling red-faced creature that would be placed in his arms--if he was lucky. “I think…” he said hesitantly, “I wouldn’t mind either. Not if… if you’re there to help.”

Charles smiled at him, luminous, and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Have you thought of names?” he asked.

“I… I thought you would want…” He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. _To never see it_ , for a while, and he’d tried not to think about what that would mean for the future he was only now starting to picture here, at the manor, with Charles. And then, for a brief moment, _To name it._ Charles took it as the latter, though, to his relief; he wasn’t sure if Charles might start crying again if he’d learned that Erik had sort of assumed he’d be sent away, or the child would, and he hated when Charles cried.

“I would never presume,” he said, his smile now tinged with sadness. “I… I like the Jewish names for girls. Ruth. Miriam. Rachel.”

Shock slipped through him. “You would… you would want them to be raised Jewish?”

“I… yes, of course.” Charles squinted at him. “It was… always important to you. You rarely ever said, but I could tell that… your memories of your family were bound up in it. Whenever we passed a synagogue, you would pause. And I would catch a glimpse in your mind of your mother.” He’d forgotten. How had he forgotten? Shabbat with his mother helping him hold the matches, light the candles. “Erik?” Charles sounded worried. “Erik, did I--say something wrong?”

“No,” Erik whispered.

“It’s just--you’re crying.” And Charles reached up and wiped away the tears that had tracked down Erik’s cheek. Erik touched his face, startled to find it wet.

“I just--remembered something,” Erik said, and Charles seemed to understand. He drew Erik close, gently putting away Erik’s knitting when it stabbed him in the thigh, and ran his fingers through his hair soothingly. They stayed like that for a long time.  
  
  
  
A zebra made of copper harvested from pennies, the size of his thumb, the rippling patterns on its back made of alloyed brass. Its head upraised, like prey scenting the air. A starling, carved from cast iron, its wings outstretched, with verdigris-edged bronze for the accented feathers on its underside. A lumbering polar bear, bigger than the rest, shaped from white silver so fine you could see the sweep of its fur. Its nose and sparkling black eyes made from a dark tungsten carbide, so that light would glitter in that darkness. A yellow-gold lion, its mane slicked back, licking its paw like a kitten, looking serene and unworried for once surrounded by dancing circles of prey. Erik braided steel into their backs, connected them to a mobile frame. Worried over the finest details; the claws of the lion, the tail of the zebra. Charles stepped in one day when he was nearly done, his head thrown back to watch the way the sunlight clattered off the metal animals, and placed a hand on Erik’s shoulder--his touches had grown more common, more proprietary, since they had learned about Erik’s… condition--fingers trailing down the side of his neck. “It’s beautiful,” he said softly.

“I remember that you caught a starling once,” Erik said. “We were camping in the Alps, and you upended a canister of granola in your hand--nuts spilling everywhere--I gave you a look for being so wasteful but you just laughed at me--and you held out your hand, very still, until birds came to feed from your palm. Snowfinches. A partridge or two. And at last a starling. I don’t know what it was doing there. I’d never seen a starling so high before. And the look of delight on your face as it glittered in your hand, it was… I’ve never seen anything like that, either.”

Charles sighed. His strokes down the side of Erik’s neck turned gentle. “That was a dream, my love,” he said softly.

Erik nodded. He was learning, he thought, how to distinguish between dream and memory, though he wasn’t very good at it yet. Charles, though, he could ask about anything. Charles would tell him whether something was real. “I remember that you laughed the first time I kissed you. Astonished, a little mean. I thought… of course, why would you ever want someone like me? But you took pity on me, and… in time we grew close. It’s all right if that’s what happened. I would understand.”

“The first time you kissed me,” Charles said, “I was too busy ripping your clothes off to laugh.” He hesitated, but the mention of sex didn’t make Erik shy away, so he continued, “Just a dream. Just a bad dream.”

“And after that,” Erik said, “I remember, after the first time you had me… you told me you loved me. Was that real?”

“Yes,” Charles breathed. “Yes, that was real.”

Erik turned his face to nuzzle against Charles’s hand, and Charles ran his thumb sweetly, gently, across Erik’s features, as if cataloging them, as if memorizing them. He hadn’t kissed him since that disastrous night in Charles’s room, not a proper kiss, but Erik thought it was only just a matter of time. Charles stared at his lips sometimes like he wanted to fall in, like the only thing that could possibly restrain him from falling upon Erik like an animal was love, love, love. “Good,” he confessed quietly. “I wanted it to be real.”

Charles placed a hand on Erik’s. The sun shimmered mutely over their clasped hands.

They put up the mobile together.  
  
  
  
Not long after, Raven came.  
  
  
  
He heard it first as a scratching at his windowsill. He’d thought it was part of a nightmare at first, a dream of lying awake in Sebastian’s bed after a long night spent negotiating, waiting for Sebastian to return and make use of him, and then a scratching at the door, Erik’s hands trembling, his face buried in the pillow as he waited for Sebastian--or whatever worse was lying in wait for him in the dark--to come and hurt him again. He came awake inhaling the scent of old dust and mahogany, the comforting scent of _Charles_ which lingered on his sheets after nights spent curled up together, and his heartbeat settled, only to hike up again when the noise repeated, and then a faint scraping sound as his window was pushed open.

Mystique clambered through the windowsill. He couldn’t read the expression on her face, even though the waxing moon cast her in light so bright that he knew her features at once, knew at once why she’d come. She studied him for a long time, or maybe only seconds but it _felt_ like a long time, taking in the curve of his belly--unmistakable now--the way he was sitting bolt upright in bed, fists clenched in the sheets. (Charles had bought new ones eventually, after the old ones had fallen apart after a time too many in the washing machine, and he loved them because they were _his._ ) “Erik,” she said, not whispering but low, intent. “Erik. You’ve been missed.”

Erik shook and shook and didn’t answer. Was this a dream? He wanted to call out to Charles. _Is this real?_

“What are you doing here?” Mystique asked slowly. “I tracked you to Westchester, but… what are you doing _here?_ In this house? Who owns it now? What are they doing with you--?”

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Please, Mystique, don’t.”

Mystique vaulted over the windowsill and strode toward him. He flinched away, crawling up the bed, but there was nowhere he could go--he was trapped, trapped here, and now Mystique was going to take him _back_ , and Sebastian was going to make him _crawl_ \--”Erik,” she said soothingly. “Erik, shh, it’s okay. I’m here to get you out.” A complicated expression fell on her face as she looked again at the swell of his belly. “I… You don’t have to be afraid. I’m going to get you out.”

“You’re here to take me back,” Erik breathed.

“Yes,” Mystique said. “I’ll take you back, to Sebastian--”

“ _Like fuck you will,”_ Charles snarled from the doorway, and Mystique stopped moving.

Erik scrambled out of bed and ran for the door. Charles immediately grabbed him--not hard, but firmly--and pushed him behind himself, his fingers pressed to his temple, his stance angry and ready for battle. Unlike when he’d confronted MacTaggart and the CIA agents, now there was a knife in his hand. He advanced two steps into the room--and froze when moonlight struck Mystique’s face.

“Raven,” he gasped, and Mystique started-- _breathing_ again, but the way she gaped at Charles made it seem as though shock had paralyzed her as surely as telepathy.

“Charles,” she said, and it all slammed into Erik like a freight train, making him stagger, making him reel back with the force of his own stupidity, or maybe the force of a telepathic block on his mind snapping. _A little girl with blue scales and yellow eyes who could become whatever she wanted to be._ Raven. Mystique. The sister Charles had lost to Sebastian Shaw. Of course Charles’s lost sister was the woman who had been so kind to him on the boat, the woman who had blushed dark blue when Erik had called her _lovely,_ the woman who had made him think of chess and lamplit conversation late at night. Of course the pieces fit together, the hole in Charles’s heart and the knot of Raven’s, clicking into place almost audibly, so that Erik could hardly understand how Charles, who claimed to hear _music_ in his head, couldn’t sense it himself. 

“Of course he sent you,” Charles said, and he sounded sorrowful, but no less enraged. “Of course. Well, you can tell Sebastian fucking Shaw that I’m coming for him, and I’m going to drive this knife into his chest and rip out his still-beating heart.”

“What--Charles, what--?” Raven froze again in what looked like an uncomfortable position, her hand mid-gesture, and only her eyes and mouth free. “Let me go, you asshole--”

“You’re trying to _steal my mate_ ,” Charles snarled. “Maybe Shaw thinks I won’t kill you on sight--maybe he’s even right--but I’m not letting you take one step closer to Erik.”

“Your mate--” Raven’s eyes flickered. “No. I don’t believe it. You’re _not_ an abusive alpha--”

“Abusive!” Charles barked out a laugh. “Is that what Shaw told you? A man who beats and rapes and _thieves_ , who forces his omega to--to--”

“No,” Raven said, but she looked very pale, almost periwinkle in the white dye of the moonlight. “No--Sebastian is a good man--”

Erik made an awful sound, like something dying, and Raven, shocked out of her own stupor, looked past Charles to where Erik was hiding in the shadows of the room, the metal bedframe nearby twisting anxiously. This time, seeing whatever she did in Erik’s face, she really did blanch; it wasn’t just the moonlight turning her fair. “No. Oh my god. Erik. I’m so sorry--”

“You’re _sorry?!”_ Charles cried out. “You watched as Erik was tortured--”

“She didn’t know,” Erik whispered. _Charles, please,_ he thought across the link they shared, _she didn’t know._

Charles took a deep, steadying breath and lowered the knife. Raven’s eyes flickered to it and she laughed nervously. “And what were you planning to do with that?” she asked, forced levity in her voice.

“You’d be surprised at what I’ve learned since I saw you last,” Charles said steadily. “What I learned looking for you. I spent _years_ looking for you, and it gave me the greatest love of my life and the greatest agony of my life, but I’m done looking for you, Raven. You’re right. You were right all along. I was trying to control you, and you’re an adult, and you can make your own choices. And you chose _wrong._ You chose the side of a man who--” Charles struggled with words. After all this time, he still struggled to articulate what had been done to Erik, the creature that had been forged out of his flesh and blood and spirit. “--who took a look at a child he tortured in the concentration camps and saw in him the perfect mate, if only he could be broken first.”

“He’s not--” Raven’s eyes were wide and frightened. “Oh my god, Charles. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“Years of pain you could’ve saved him,” Charles breathed, and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. With a rush of air, Raven was released from her frozen position, and she held out a hand hesitantly as though she wanted to touch Charles on the shoulder, but the moonlight caught on the knife still clenched in his right hand and she thought better of it, her face falling into cold and desolate lines. Erik reached out, too, and wound his fingers through the hem of Charles’s nightshirt. Charles glanced back at him, his eyes tired, and gave him a once-over, as if to check that he was all right, that Raven hadn’t hurt him with her sheer presence. Strange; Erik wanted to do the same to him.

“Get out, Raven,” he said wearily. “I--I swore I’d kill anyone who tried to take Erik back, but. I guess that’s another way in which I’ve failed him, another promise I can’t keep. I won’t hurt you, if you go. _Now._ ”

Raven cast a lingering glance at Erik, speechless--the blues of her face almost seemed to ripple in the cool light. She was waiting for him, Erik realized. Waiting for _him_ to tell her it was okay for her to leave, to leave him in the hands of the angry alpha holding a knife. He nodded, trying to convey by the crinkle of his eyes and the smallness of his motions that he was thankful for her, and she took a halting step back toward the window, then climbed onto the windowsill without looking, as though the force of muscle memory had guided her. Silently, stealthily, like a large cat, she slipped out the way she’d come, and Erik imagined her scaling down the tough brick walls of the house, putting her bare, scaled feet on a spare jut of stone, her strong fingers digging into the curves and ruts of the architecture.

At last, Charles dropped the knife.

He brought his hands to his mouth, as though holding in a scream, and Erik hesitantly drew closer to him. Charles still stood facing the window, and there was a wetness glittering in his eyes, and with a rush in the pit of his stomach, Erik realized that Charles had sent away Raven _for him,_ that there was a part of him that had never stopped hoping she’d come home that had died the moment she’d crawled through that window for Sebastian Shaw. Without hesitating or flinching away, Erik threw his arms around Charles and drew him close, and Charles made a half-snuffling, half-sobbing noise into his shoulder, like a wounded beast, and Erik put his head down on Charles’s and made shushing noises, wondering if he’d ever done this before, if he’d ever, in the life they’d lived a long, long time ago, comforted Charles the way Charles had grown so accustomed to comforting him.

Erik led them both to the bed and coaxed Charles up onto it. The window was still open, the curtains fluttering in a cool night breeze, casting dancing gauzy shadows across their faces and hands. Erik arranged Charles so that he was curled into Erik’s lap, and ran his fingers through his hair; Charles scrubbed at his eyes violently and tried to sit up, saying, “I should--” roughly, and Erik knew what he meant, he knew that Charles wanted to take care of him, but strangely the fear of Sebastian was far away now, and all that mattered was the hot spill of emotion from Charles’s eyes, the shaking of his shoulders. Erik ran a gentle hand down the line of his shoulders and with a rush Charles let out a sob. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered, and the apologies tripped over themselves like children holding hands in a line: “She should’ve never gotten that close to you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m such a mess, I swore I’d take care of you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and Erik shushed him and petted him and thought about what this man would do for him, up to and including sending his own sister away, and felt, in spite of the way he’d just come closer to Sebastian than he had in months, the safest he’d ever felt.  
  
  
  
Erik waited until Hank returned, the Monday after the Raven incident. Charles, seeming apologetic for not thinking of it before, told him he’d installed psychic triggers in his mind so that if anyone came within range besides Hank he would wake immediately, so he’d thought that he could wait. He didn’t go out to the garden that morning; instead he stared in the mirror, preparing himself. He’d filled out, with the food Charles had plied him with at every opportunity, and now the pregnancy. He looked different, he thought, from the omega who’d arrived here. Not stronger, perhaps, but--sturdier. He ran one hand down the banister as he walked downstairs, felt cool wood against his knuckles as he knocked on the door of Charles’s study.

“Come in!” He sounded surprised. Erik had never bothered him there before.

Erik slipped inside, looking curiously at the maps and documents Hank had spread out. There was a map of the USSR, and another one of the Caribbean; photos, of what looked suspiciously like missile launch sites; sprawling piles of paperwork in both English and Russian. Hank was sitting on the other side of Charles’s desk, his hands clasped, and staring at Erik. Charles had stood, was solicitously standing between Erik and Hank, took Erik’s arm and asked quietly, “Is everything all right?”

Erik looked at the documents. Among the photos and paperwork was a sketch that seemed strangely familiar, of Sebastian, but with a mustache and glasses. “You’re working on how to find Sebastian,” he said quietly.

Charles flinched, the way he always did when Erik called him _Sebastian_ , but nodded. Hank was quiet, perhaps sensing that something was going on beyond his understanding.

“He’ll never stop coming for me, will he?” Erik asked Charles, and slowly, slowly, Charles shook his head.

“It’ll be all right,” Charles said fiercely. “I’ll never let him take you--”

“I want to help,” Erik said.

Charles stopped. “What?”

“I want to help you find Sebastian,” Erik repeated.

He studied Charles’s eyes through his lashes; they flashed with trepidation, then with concern. “Erik,” he said slowly, “you know you don’t have to. If it’s too difficult… I understand.”

“I want to,” he said.

“Charles,” Hank spoke up, and to his credit didn’t flinch when Charles leveled a fierce glare at him. “I don’t know… exactly what’s going on here, but. If Erik can help, surely that’s all for the good? I don’t--know why I was sent to gather information from Erik on Shaw. But. You _know_ they’re planning something--something big--something that we’re running out of time to stop.”

“War,” Erik said softly. “He’s planning war.”

Charles looked at him. _If you really want to help,_ he thought, _look at me._

And though it was difficult, Erik dragged his gaze up from the floor and met Charles’s eyes. Charles bit his lip, then reached out and squeezed his hand. He gestured for Erik to take the other seat in front of his desk, next to Hank; Erik, though, refused to let go of his hand, and Charles ended up standing next to Erik, stalwart as a soldier, as Erik drew a photograph of the submarine being built toward himself and said, “First, you’ll need to take out Emma. She’s a telepath as well, but she has another mutation… she can turn to solid diamond. But when she’s in that form, she’s not able to use her telepathy…”  
  
  
  
There were times that his well of information ran dry, or was out-of-date, or it just got too much for him, and Erik would retreat back into the gardens or the work shed while Hank and Charles pored over the information he’d given them. It was past high summer now, and whichever he chose he always ended the day chasing a cool shower rinsing off the patina of sweat he’d acquired working outside, lifting sacks of sod and heavy planks of metal. He relished the silence after Hank’s incessant, endless questions and Charles’s stony silence that he only broke to clarify a certain point. Charles sent reassuring telepathic tendrils through his mind, but still, it was hard.

And then Charles decided to go to the USSR.

“Don’t,” Erik pleaded. “Please. _Please._ I thought I was ready, and I wasn’t--Charles, please, I don’t want you to get hurt--”

But Charles was adamant. Erik couldn’t bring himself to shout at him, still; all he could muster was a sort of chilly coldness that still melted away whenever Charles smiled at him or asked him for a game of chess. But he spent more time outside, and less time in that office listening to Hank and Charles make plans, less time thinking about all the ways that this mission could go wrong, less time thinking about all the things Sebastian could _do_ to Charles, all the ways he could make him hurt. He tried to keep up an aloof demeanor, though Charles broke through all too often. He lost himself among the thick-stalked lavender and the cascade of wild violets that carpeted the ground beneath his feet, he lost himself in the grind of metal against metal and the satisfaction of feeling something bend to his whims, for once, and didn’t think about anything at all.

When Charles found him that day, it was in the garden. Erik had taken a trowel and was turning over soil for cabbage and parsley transplants that Hank had given him. He was kneeling an inch deep in the thick, loamy grasp of soil, smelling earth and growing things and digging his fingers, encased in gardener’s gloves that Charles had gotten for him, into the earth, loosening it and turning it over so that he could root his little seedlings into the unpacked ground. He was turning the bed closest to the lavender patch into a vegetable garden, so the air was redolent with the floral perfume of it. It was early; the sun hadn’t yet crested the tall trees. Charles loitered nearby until Erik had patted the soil down around the seedlings and then drew close to him, smiling a nervous, thin smile.

“I have a question,” he said, sitting down next to Erik. Erik looked at him, sat back on his hands. He tipped his throat back and felt the sun, just peeking over the trees, warm his face, a silent signal for Charles to go on. “Would you accompany me into town today? I know… I know the people might be overwhelming. But I’ll be there. I promise. I can calm you down, if you like, or if you don’t… we can turn around immediately.”

“Why?” Erik asked. Charles liked it when he pushed back against him, when he didn’t just go along with Charles’s demands but resembled, rather, the Erik that had been, so he had been trying to do it more, trying to get more of those smiles Charles favored him with when he asked _why._

“The New York State Fair is in town today,” Charles told him. “I thought… you might like it.”

“A fair?” Erik asked. This was a bit of a foreign concept to him. He remembered, with the vague blurriness of all his pre-Sebastian memories, stalking a man through a gaggle of children lined up for a carnival ride, but that was scenery, not experience.

“You know, games, rides… fair food.”

“You want to do something before you leave for the USSR,” Erik said, not accusatory, just stating a fact.

“I… yes. Hank and I decided. I’m going tomorrow. I’ll intercept Shaw and his men. I won’t be alone, Erik--I’ll have a battalion with me to handle Frost--”

“I want to come,” Erik said, though he could hear its falsity. He didn’t want to go, he wanted Charles to _stay,_ and they were two very different things.

“No,” Charles said sharply. “Erik, you’re pregnant. And I could never ask--no. Erik,” he said more softly, and held Erik’s hand in his, clasping his gloved hand in his own cool, calming palm. “Erik, it has to be done. For you to be safe, once and for all. I promise, I’ll be prepared for him. I just want… one good day with you, before I leave. And,” he said with more levity, “Hank has to finish packing up all the materials for me. So what do you say? We get out of his hair and have some fun?”

Erik--nodded. Charles’s face split into a grin. The sun highlighted the planes of his face, the glitter of his smile, and Erik was briefly dazzled.  
  
  
  
They ended up walking into town, hand in hand, though Charles clucked over him and watched anxiously for any sign of fatigue; Erik, though, felt better now that he was nearing the third trimester, most of the morning sickness gone and the fainting spells certainly left in the past, and kept up easily to Charles’s slow, considerate pace. The fair had been set up in a field outside the town, and it seemed normal business had stopped for the day; people were sitting on their porches, chatting with each other, children were running riot in the street. Erik noticed as they walked along that people were favoring them with kind smiles, more, he thought, than he would’ve expected two strangers in a small town to attract. He clung to Charles’s arm and murmured a question about it in his ear.

Interestingly, Charles flushed. “They remember me,” he said quietly. “From when I lived here. Some of them even worked at the mansion when my mother was alive. They were… glad, to see me back. And they think… they think that you’re my pregnant mate. They’re excited for you. For us.”

“…Oh,” Erik said.

He hadn’t been in town since they’d driven through it on the way from the airport to the mansion, and then he’d been too busy staring at his hands in his lap, terribly conscious of Charles’s presence, to take in much. Now, he looked around, absorbing the place Charles had grown up on the outskirts of, looking down at the life teeming below from his lonely manor. They walked down a pleasant main square, not like the squares in European cities but more of a large intersection of roads, and signs winked above their heads: haircuts, a grocer’s, a realtor with pictures of houses posted in the window. Erik stretched out his senses to fill up the long metal cars parked by the side of the road, the bicycle that careened in their path. Charles shouted after it, and the boy made stuttered apologies when he glanced at Erik’s belly, and then was off again, tracing their path ahead of them to the fair. 

Charles led Erik through the town and into the field outside of town, and the fair opened up around them.

It was… almost overwhelming. The smell of fryer fat, thick and mouth-watering, imbued the whole scene with a sort of hunger that Erik was unfamiliar with. Children ran across their path, children were _everywhere_ \--he wasn’t sure he’d ever been around so many children before, much less in the last few years--adults chasing after them or congregating around benches and in little alcoves. There were game booths, one where a teenage boy was trying to knock down a pyramid of milk bottles, one where water guns were affixed to the counter and the game was to fill a balloon with water fastest; and more, and more; there were spinning rides and a Ferris wheel, there were people, _everywhere._ Erik felt dizzy with the number of people all around him.

“Erik?” Charles was looking at him with concern. Of course he’d peeked into his head, seen how overwhelming it was. “Are you all right? We can leave.”

“I’m--hungry,” Erik decided, and Charles looked at him, astonished, then laughed, brilliant and bright, and led him to get some cotton candy, which he didn’t think was very healthy for the baby, but which melted on his tongue like a sugared cloud. Charles kissed the corner of his mouth and licked his lips ostentatiously, getting the last touch of candyfloss. Erik smiled at him.

They wandered through the fair, playing games and eating whatever took their fancies, though Charles wouldn’t let him do anything too strenuous, and steered him away from the spinning rides. Charles, with a wicked grin, “guessed” perfectly the number of jellybeans in a large jar and plied Erik with the gigantic stuffed otter he’d won. They had lunch in town, and Erik had had to carry the stuffed otter with him, with Charles grinning at his shoulder; it was large enough that it warranted its own seat at the table. Charles plied him with all the things he couldn’t make at home, spaghetti and calamari and a hearty platter of meatballs, and Erik was pleasantly full when they returned to the fair that afternoon, with Charles announcing grandly that he planned to win Erik some more otters.

When Charles was busy with the water-gun game, Erik slipped into the tent next door. FREE PALM AND TAROT READINGS, the sign announced. He stepped into the heavily-incensed air of the tent and sneezed. The young beta woman, clad in turban and flowing silk robes, smiled at him. “Would you like a reading?” she said in a clipped accent that was likely supposed to be Romanian but sounded merely Russian.

Erik settled across from her. “Yes,” he said, “but not for me. For…” he placed a hand on his belly. The beta woman smiled, toothy but friendly, and pulled out a large, heavy deck of cards. She pushed it into Erik’s hands. “Shuffle,” she said gently. Erik did.

She took the deck back and drew fourteen cards, putting them in a complicated spread, four cards on the right and a cross-formation on the left. She told him generic things about wealth and fortune, about good looks--”an omega daughter,” she pronounced. Erik wistfully rested a hand on his belly and wondered about the world this woman claimed she saw, when he could barely see past the end of the summer, could barely imagine how the world and _Charles_ would treat him after the babe was born. “In spite of the circumstances of her conception,” she said, “she will never doubt that she is beloved. Beloved beyond all measure.”

Erik looked at her for a long time. The woman looked back steadily. “What’s your name?” Erik said after a moment.

“You should have asked me that before you sat down,” she reprimanded gently. “But it’s Marya. Marya Maximoff.”

“And where are you from, Marya Maximoff?”

She laughed. “St. Louis,” she said, and her accent was abruptly American. “I’ve never been to the Old Country, although my parents have. And I learned to read cards in Lily Dale, New York, not at the knee of a Rroma grandmother. But,” she said, smiling, “I don’t think I told you anything you didn’t want to hear, did I?”

On his way out of the tent, a child ran into Erik’s legs. Erik straightened her, gently, and sent her on back on her way, her braid bouncing behind her. Charles, his hair wet and plastered to his forehead, was looking around for him, his fingers tapping impatiently on his thigh, though he relaxed and grinned when he caught sight of him. “Sorry,” he confessed. “Didn’t win. The water gun backfired on me.”

“That’s all right,” Erik said, and, feeling daring, took Charles’s elbow with his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding a giant overstuffed otter. “Let’s keep walking.”

When the sun faded into twilight, they went on the Ferris wheel. They left the otter in the care of the ride operator and clambered into one of the buckets scrolling on by. Erik held his breath as they began to rise into the air. He wasn’t afraid of heights, it turned out; he leaned over the edge, with Charles gripping his hand compulsively as though experiencing enough fear of heights for both of them, and watched the world grow smaller and smaller. The swarms of children far below, the haze of fried food fading into clear midsummer air. The striped awnings of the fair booths blurred into solid colors, and far away, the fair entrance blinked mild colored lights into the evening.

“Look,” Charles murmured into his ear, and he looked up--

\--and he could see the mansion. The windows were all shuttered and dark, but, if he squinted, he could see the lavender patch spreading downhill, the blot of purple on the hillside. He could see the eaves of the house rising above the trees, the tower thrusting pointedly up into the air, and he could see the stars. The force of them were blunted from the fairground lights below, but they peeked shyly through the fabric of the night, dull and manifold, and Erik shivered to be bathed in their hesitant light.

A rustling beside him, and Charles draped his light jacket over Erik’s shoulders. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Should have thought that you’d be cold when the sun went down.”

“You don’t have to,” Erik whispered.

“I can’t bear watching you shiver,” Charles told him, and went faintly pink in the ears. “Sorry. So many times you told me off for trying to take care of you… and I’d always wished I’d told you. What it meant to me, the few rare times you did.”

Erik curled into the jacket. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Charles rested a hesitant hand on the nape of his neck, tracing the line of the jacket, and then rubbing a thumb over his bonding mark. Erik tensed. Sebastian’s mark was still there. He knew, now, that at any time Charles could dive into his mind and rip the bond open to claim him again. That Sebastian’s death was a matter of principle, not self-interest. And yet he didn’t. He held Erik at night and kissed the corners of his mouth and _touched_ him like he was the only thing that mattered in the universe, he read Erik’s mind and left a presence at the back of his consciousness, never nudging, simply basking, but he never pushed for more, he had never tried to get _inside_ of Erik ever since they’d stopped trying to undo the damage Emma had left in his mind. Charles was so gentle with him. Erik still had trouble remembering, had not recovered so very many memories since they’d stopped trying, but occasionally a taste, a smell, would send him back to Europe, with a smiling blue-eyed man across from him. But he thought now that it was impossible he hadn’t known how much Charles loved him, just from the gentleness of his being. He thought it impossible that he hadn’t loved Charles back.

Erik tired early these days, and by the time the Ferris wheel ride was over, he was curled against Charles’s shoulder, his eyes heavy-lidded, an idle hand tracing patterns on his belly. Charles helped him out of the bucket and supported him on the long ramble back to the mansion. Crickets warbled in the tall grass as they hiked back up the path. This time, when they got to the iron gates, Charles stood aside and allowed Erik to push them open with his mind, the metal parting smoothly under his hand. Up the road, into the mansion, into bed together. Erik fell asleep to Charles running a soothing hand over his bump, murmuring the same nonsense sounds that Erik sensed were not meant for him.

“Erik,” he thought he heard in the middle of the night, awe threading through Charles’s voice like lightning figures. “Erik, I can feel her. I can _hear_ her.”

“That’s nice, Charles,” Erik murmured, and fell back asleep immediately. When he woke again the next morning, Charles was gone.  
  
  
  
_My Erik,_ the note on the kitchen counter read,

_I hope you’ll forgive me for leaving without a word. I was worried that if you begged me to stay one more time, I actually would. But Shaw has to be stopped. And I have to stop him._

_I’ll return in three days. You can count on it._

_Take care of our daughter._

_Your Charles_

Erik sat at the counter for a long time. The baby in his belly roiled for food. He thought about getting up and making a sandwich. Eventually, he did.  
  
  
  
He didn’t go outside that day; he curled up in the library with a book and read to the child. The parenting books that Charles had been checking out from the library and reading obsessively said that babies could hear beginning at eighteen weeks. It was a boring text on military history during the American Civil War, but he thought that though the baby could hear it almost certainly couldn’t understand, and anyway it was easier to drift off and stare out the window, waiting naively for Charles to come driving up to the house, if he was reading something he didn’t much care about. He made himself soup for supper and went to bed early, though he lay awake listening to the house creak and watching the cobwebs sway in the breeze from the curtains. Eventually exhaustion dragged him down.

He missed Charles.  
  
  
  
The next day, he ventured out to check on the flower beds, and worked up a sweat weeding and watering. The thing was, he knew why Charles was in such a hurry to defeat Shaw, and it had nothing to do with the mark on the back of his neck--well, very little to do with it--and everything to do with the baby in his belly. He knew that when the third trimester came roaring down upon them he wouldn’t want to leave, not for anything, not when Erik could pop at any moment. He was… putting their affairs in order, Erik had puzzled out. Charles was desperate to have this done, not so that Erik could be his again, but so that Erik could give birth without fear.

He… didn’t know what to feel about that.

He went inside and ate without tasting it and played with the metal house he’d built for Charles’s amusement, adding the new fountain on the grounds, the cradle in the nursery. At night, he flipped disinterestedly through one of Charles’s parenting books, padded into the study and looked at the maps. Charles would have arrived in the USSR last night. He’d be spending today… doing whatever it was he was doing. Intercepting Sebastian. Fighting. Getting hurt, maybe. And he’d return tomorrow, if things hadn’t gone catastrophically. He wished, badly, he knew what was going on, but Charles had taken pains to make sure the CIA had forgotten about him. He lay in bed quietly trying to remember what the USSR had felt like on his skin, the heat of it in midsummer, the cold of it in midwinter. He lay in bed stroking his belly, thinking about Charles, wondering what he was doing now. If he was missing him.

He wasn’t sure if he’d been asleep or not when the noise woke him. A heavy tread downstairs. Light flashed through Erik’s nervous system. Charles, back early. Maybe Sebastian hadn’t been there. Maybe it had been easier than they’d thought. “Charles?” he called down, quiet, but his voice carried in the thin air. The footsteps downstairs stopped. “Charles?”

He slipped out of bed. One hand on his belly to calm the child’s kicks, he padded out to the banister, looked down--

\--and saw Sebastian’s cold light eyes pinning him to the wall.

“ _Schatz,_ ” he said, as Azazel slunk behind him. “What did I say about spreading your legs for every little alpha who smiles at you?”

“No,” Erik breathed. This was a nightmare. This was a bad dream. “No, this isn’t real--you’re supposed to be--”

“In the USSR?” Sebastian smiled. He advanced on the long main staircase. “Yes, it was quite a pretty lie, wasn’t it? It had to be, to draw out your great protector. Raven helped with laying the groundwork, actually, before she disappeared. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” He waited, as though he actually expected Erik to answer him. “Ah, well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll find her, too, when this is all over.” Halfway up the stairs now. Erik stumbled backwards. “I found you, didn’t I?”

 _Charles!_ Erik thought, turning it into a scream, into a wish. He knew it was useless. Knew that Charles would never be able to hear him, not unbonded and distant as they were.

“Calling out for your _alpha_?” Sebastian sneered. “He can’t hear you. There’s only me.”

Erik’s back caught against the wall of the hallway. Sebastian was drawing close to him now, a figure as towering and as frightening as he remembered in his dreams. That _scent_ , it had hijacked his nervous system, had taken control of him. Had paralyzed him with fear, yes, but also with the near-painful desire of an omega to submit. His own body in revolt, when all he wanted was to run, to run and never come back, and all his body wanted was to kneel and grovel and beg for forgiveness. “No,” he gasped. “Please, no.”

“Oh, Erik,” Sebastian purred. “I won’t hurt you.” He was close now, very close. He stretched out his hand; Erik flinched, but it didn’t come to wrap around his throat, didn’t fist in his hair and drag his head back. Instead, Sebastian reached out and pressed a gentle touch to his belly. “Not when you’re carrying my heir.”

Erik bolted. He ran for his bedroom and shut the door; Sebastian let him go, lazily barking an order down the stairs, and Erik had only just stumbled backwards from the locked door when Azazel caught him in a rush of sulfur and teleported him back outside. Sebastian reached out and crushed Erik to him, fingers pressing into Erik’s hip and arm with strength that was not quite supernatural but would leave bruises nonetheless. Erik whimpered. Tears had started streaming down his face at some point. He’d known this was too good to be true. He’d known the dream would end. People always woke up from dreams. It was the way of life.

Sebastian twisted his head around and scraped his teeth down Erik’s bonding mark. Erik cried out as pleasure-pain lanced through him. Sebastian laughed, a low chuckle that Erik could feel where his ear was pressed to Sebastian’s clavicle. It made him go weak-kneed and shocky, and it wasn’t until they were outside and Erik was stumbling to a long black towncar parked in front of the fountain that he came back to himself. “No,” he gasped, and tried to wrench out of Sebastian’s grip--it was no good, of course, it never had been. “No!”

“Calm yourself,” Sebastian hissed, and tossed him into the backseat. He climbed in after him, and nodded to Janos, who was driving; Azazel, meanwhile, was--

\--was soaking the front steps with gasoline--

“No!” Erik screamed, but they were already pulling away from the mansion. “Please don’t, please, Sebastian--”

Sebastian slapped him. Erik’s pleas cut off in a hoarse cry. He could see the flicker of flames in the distance as they pulled through the gate, which had been torn from its hinges; he watched in horror as the only home he’d ever known gradually, inexorably, went up in flames.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roll mouse over for warnings (heed them, there are many).

Charles was anxious and snappy from the moment he had to leave Erik behind, sleeping soundly in his bed, the little spark of a life in his belly thinking formless thoughts, just a harmonious note here and there in the background melody of Erik’s mind. He could have stayed there forever, and never wanted for food or sex or anything, just listening with awe to the soft low sweetness of Erik’s dreams—without nightmares, tonight—punctuated by the baby’s first thoughts. He was grateful and awed that he had been able to witness that, that he hadn’t missed it while he was on-mission, but leaving them was wrenching, it was like his heart was still there, in that bed, cradled in Erik’s cupped unconscious hands. MacTaggart suffered the brunt of his mood, but she was equally cold and impatient with him, and between them was a tacit understanding to finish this as efficiently as possible, so he could go back to Erik and she wouldn’t have to think about either of them anymore.

Moscow wasn’t necessarily _cold_ this time of year, but harsh winds had blown bad weather in from the east, and so Charles wrapped up warmly in a sweater and gloves as MacTaggart herded him into the back of a military transport. They set up on the edges of the general’s estate with binoculars, and during the heft of the stakeout Charles spent most of his time daydreaming about Erik and the baby, wondering what he was doing now, whether he would be angry at him—as angry as Erik got, nowadays—for leaving without a word when he returned, or imagining little hands grasping his own and the happy babble of childhood as Erik watched on, smiling.

When the helicopter descended, he snapped to attention. 

Erik had told him that Shaw was a mutant, that he had the power to absorb and convert any form of energy into strength, longevity, and a terrifying power that Erik struggled to describe. But he wasn’t a telepath. Charles would take out the Frost woman first—he was looking forward to dealing with her, after seeing the horrors she’d inflicted on Erik’s mind—and then hold Shaw in place while MacTaggart and her soldiers took care of the bloody work. It was almost like working with Erik again. Almost.

Through his binoculars, he watched as Frost jumped down to the ground, resplendent in white, and he firmly suppressed a burst of loathing that coursed through him before he could project it to everyone in a mile-radius around him; she had _known,_ she must have known, she was a telepath, how Erik had suffered, how Erik had been _screaming_ every moment he was with Shaw, and she had helped him hurt him anyway. He waited for Shaw to follow her out.

Frost waved to the pilot of the helicopter and strode inside. He waited.

When the helicopter rose into the air again, he belatedly realized something had gone very wrong.

Beside him, MacTaggart cursed. “Damn it, our intel was wrong _again—_ we have to let her go, we can’t risk a frontal assault on the compound for anything less than Shaw himself—Charles—Charles, wait!”

But Charles was already scrambling out of their foxhole, vaulting over the barrow of dirt and sprinting for the door. “Charles!” MacTaggart screamed in frustration, but he ignored her, freezing guards where they stood, dodging bullets when more distant guards noticed the intruder in their midst, gritting his teeth, barreling forward—he had pinned _so much hope_ on this mission, he had left Erik _behind_ , and Shaw hadn’t even shown up—he was getting that telepath and killing her no matter what else happened. He slammed through the front doors and commanded the two guards who raised their guns at him to fire at each other. He shoved past their bleeding, shrieking forms, following the diamond-cold trace of Frost’s mind, keeping his own powers as muted and quiet as possible—he found her in the bedroom—

Her head whipped around when he flung the doors open. The moment she saw him, she abandoned the illusion she was creating for the man on the bed and threw all of her considerable powers at him, and a headache immediately started up as she battered at his walls. Her mind was cold, like it had been carved from ice, and intricate, but there was an ugliness to it, a sort of Brutalism to the architecture of her thoughts, as though she had grown up able to force her way through any situation because of her powers and never learned finesse or gentleness. Meeting her for the first time explained _so much_ about the state of Erik’s mind. Remembering Erik, that gave him the rage he needed to match her strength for strength, and he dropped the shields just long enough to dive into her mind; she shrieked in pain; distantly, he caught sight of the general scrambling backwards, running from the room with his pants still around his ankles, but he was distracted, he was lost in the hall of mirrors that Frost had thrown up to disorient him.

 _Oh, sweetheart,_ Frost said in his mind, and he could _hear_ her smirk, _you’ve never done this before, have you?_

Charles’s mental projection raised a fist and punched through the mirror barring his way. In real life, Frost screamed, and blood began to flow from her nose. Charles plunged into her conscious mind, sorting through memories while she was dazed, moving backwards through the helicopter ride that had taken her here, to the train ride that brought her to the airport, to the _submarine—_

 _Looking for Sebastian?_ Frost sneered. _Here._

And all of a sudden it was Erik he was looking at, Erik looking small in someone else’s clothes, Erik bent over the back of a sofa, his trousers pulled down just enough for Shaw to fuck into him, and Emma’s sick amusement at Erik’s darting eyes and trembling mouth bubbled in him. The sound of an alpha plowing into a wet omega cunt suffused the memory, and footsteps rang out as the teleporter walked by, ran a finger over Erik’s lips, and smiled lasciviously; and Erik blanched, curling back into Shaw, who chuckled lowly and grabbed his hair and yanked backwards until Erik screamed in protest, his back arching, his fingers scrabbling against the fabric of the sofa back—

—and another memory, of Erik with his head laying on Frost’s lap, his eyes half-lidded and vacant as she dug through his mind, and this time Charles could feel the unmistakable fabric of Erik’s mind spread out before him, but it was different—the way Frost saw him, not the way Charles heard him—and Frost unpicked patterns of hatred, of loathing, of vengeance, unwove the fabric of Erik’s vendetta, and rewound the strands of his mind in curling patterns of love, of deference, of devotion. Seeing her work, seeing how methodical she was in excising each negative association Erik had with Shaw and replacing it with positive feeling, Charles was sick and stunned that Erik had been strong enough to jump overboard at all, had the presence of mind to sense that what had been done to him was _not right_ , and the feeling of Erik’s mind splintering under his mind would haunt him always—

—and another memory, of telepathy again, this time holding Erik’s head down as he thrashed, the light was low and he was on a stone table, laid out like a sacrifice, his hands tied behind his back and his legs spread obscenely as Shaw thrust into him again, and again, Erik’s body skidding on the stone as he failed to find purchase, his mouth open in a scream—and Frost took the strand in his mind that held all his memories of Charles and yanked at it, twisted it free until Erik was leaking psionic energy and trauma, until the tendrils that had deeply rooted Charles in Erik’s mind were broken off and withering, until Charles was just a shadow, then a shimmer, then nothing at all in Erik’s memory. In the now, Charles _screamed,_ a scream to match Erik’s, and with the blinding rage that had washed over his cool control he took Frost and _bound_ her, muted the parts of her brain where her mutation lived, until she couldn’t change and couldn’t _speak in his head_ , couldn’t make him feel the sick pleasure and arousal she had felt watching Erik be tortured and raped.

Frost reeled back and struck her head on the bedframe. Incandescent, beyond all reason, Charles strode up to her and slammed her against the footboard again, making her cry out, but not as desolately as Erik had cried out for help—he wrapped his hand around her neck and squeezed until she gagged for breath—he didn’t know how long he stood there, tightening his grip, watching the alpha who had enabled Erik’s suffering for so long slowly suffocate, but after what seemed like no time at all Moira was tugging him furiously backward and he released her, reality rushing back in on him again. “No!” Moira was shouting. “You idiot, we need her! We need her to tell us where Shaw is!”

Shaw.

Charles took a shaky breath in. At the foot of the bed, Frost was stirring, dazed; she raised a hand to her neck and coughed, daintily, looking almost confused, as though she had never had to feel vulnerability before. Given her diamond form, she probably hadn’t. Charles jerked away from Moira’s touch—his senses were screaming at him, wrong scent, wrong callouses, wrong omega—and grasped Emma’s throat again. “Well?” he demanded. His voice hardly sounded like his own. “Where is he? Where is Shaw?”

Emma glanced at the clock, and shook her head.

Charles snarled. It was an animal sound, pure rage and unreason. He lashed out at her with his telepathy, watched impassively as she screamed. Something roiled in his stomach uneasily—he had killed, sure, but even after Erik’s death, he had never really tortured, hadn’t needed to, with his gift—but he couldn’t pluck the answers from her mind, bound as she was, a solid wall of his own making between his mind and hers, and this was _important,_ this was the most important thing. She beat against his chest but he barely felt it, as out of his mind on adrenaline and fury as he was. “Tell me!” he shouted, both out loud and telepathically, and he could hear the discordant notes of Moira’s fear behind him. Frost gritted her teeth and spat at him.

They continued like that for fourteen minutes.

At last, Frost looked at the clock and began to laugh. “What?” Charles cried out. Moira had tried to pry him away from her, but the soldiers had taken the mansion, and there was no need to rush save that every minute Shaw was free was another minute Erik spent living in fear. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s 2AM in Westchester, New York,” she snarled. Blood stained her teeth from her nosebleed. _“Do you know where your mate is?”_  
  
  
  
He strained his powers the entire mad dash home, until he was bleeding from the nose, until he wanted to black out from the screaming headache he’d developed, until he couldn’t hear Moira’s concerned voice anymore—he just cast his consciousness forward, to the very limits of what he was capable of and then forward, and felt his range draw closer and closer to Westchester, to that beautiful and fragile mind, but not fast enough, not fast enough.  
  
  
  
He hadn’t burned down the whole mansion. Just the front exterior was broken, sagging, blackened. All he’d done was splash gasoline over the front door and grand hall, a careless job for an adversary who had ceased to be relevant.

He’d already taken the most important thing that mattered, anyway.  
  
  
  
Though Erik screamed and fought, Janos had sedated him once they got into New York City proper so that he couldn’t draw attention to them. He stirred and for a moment thought he was in the mansion, although the bed was too plush, familiarly plush, although the swinging light above him made a sinking pit open inside of him. He started to panic before he even opened his eyes, his pulse pounding in his ears, sweat dampening his hands. He immediately touched his belly, tracing the curve of it, pressing down as he felt the baby shift uncomfortably within him. It calmed him, though not much.

He opened his eyes and he was back in hell.

He was in Sebastian’s cabin, where he had spent so many hours on his back, on his knees, and without knowing it a moan broke from his lips. He fisted his hand in the sheets, the sheets that had seen his blood and his slick and his come, and bile rose in the back of his throat; he curled up in a little knot on the wide bed, trying to shield his belly, his mind crying out, _Charles, Charles,_ but only silence greeted him. In the sheets was Sebastian’s scent, heady and sickening, and, fainter, his own, the miserable smell of pain and distress laced through it, and he wondered if it had all been a dream, every golden sun-sweet moment with Charles, if there had ever been a Charles at all—but the baby in his belly. That was real. He had to be strong for it. For her.

But he didn’t _feel_ strong, he felt barely held together, like any touch would break him apart, and then where would the baby be, mewling and exposed, without the shelter of his body to keep her safe? The bump kept him from bringing his knees to his chest but he wrapped his arms around his knees as best he could and wiped angrily at the tears that had started leaking from his eyes the moment he’d realized where he was. 

Charles would find him. He’d promised.

Sebastian had found him, after all.

He tried not to think about the part where Charles hadn’t found him before, how it was only a chance meeting in Miami that had led to their paths crossing again. He shifted, and he could feel something against his skull—the cobalt-steel band that Shaw had crowned him with, the one that kept out telepathy—and with a rush of rage he realized that it had been Charles Sebastian had been trying to keep out all along, that he had from the very beginning known that if Charles had any inkling that Erik lived, he would have never rested until Erik was back in his arms. He yanked it off, though it caught painfully in his curls, and hurled it across the room. It tinkled innocently against the wall. _Charles!_ he cast out with his mind again, though he could feel nothing, like a sense he hadn’t even realized he’d had had been cut off. _Charles, please. You said you’d never leave me._

The door opened. Sebastian strode in.

He gave a mild look to the coronet lying on the floor and sat on the bed; Erik scrambled up and tried to cram himself in a corner, as far away from Sebastian as possible. Sebastian smiled, a flat, cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “ _Schatz,”_ he said, low and possessive. “You’re back where you belong, my dear. Back in my bed.”

Erik said nothing, just watched Sebastian with large frightened eyes. Sebastian’s grin widened, and he slowly, as though relishing the way Erik couldn’t stop him, reached out and rucked Erik’s shirt up. Belatedly, Erik realized he wasn’t wearing the clothes Charles had given him; he was wearing a suit, cut for his growing belly, in the style Sebastian favored. He didn’t like his prized possessions going about looking sloppy, even though he liked to see Erik in his clothes while they were on the boat together. Sebastian eyed his stomach, a fanatical light Erik had never seen before in his eyes. “And you’ve done it, Erik. You’re full and swollen with my child.”

Erik shook his head—what he was resisting, he didn’t know—maybe it was just Sebastian’s touch, the way he took hold of Erik’s wrist, inexorable, and dragged Erik into his lap until Erik was straddling him, Erik trying to shift away but unable to wrench his wrists out of the hold Sebastian had on him with one hand. With the other, Sebastian hovered over the bared swell of Erik’s belly, and slowly lowered his hand until it was spread across the expanse of his skin. The baby kicked at his touch. Erik bit back a sob. Sebastian petted greedily over his belly, but his attention never slackened enough to let up on his grip on Erik’s wrists. “I see your training has been slacking,” Sebastian said idly, still caressing Erik’s bump, his hand—that hand, that Erik knew could unleash energy at any moment, that Erik knew could kill him _and the child_ with a touch, _had_ killed his child—hot against Erik’s skin. “We’ll fix that, as soon as Emma gets back from Russia. For now, I have other ways of controlling you.”

Erik took a deep, shuddering breath. “You won’t,” he said, quieter than he meant, but resolute. “I won’t let you, I won’t let you hurt me again.”

Sebastian laughed. “ _Hurt_ you? Dear boy, what has Xavier been telling you? I am your _mate._ I’d never _hurt_ you.”

“You put a collar on me—you beat me—you made me, made me miscarry—”

“That was _discipline, schatz._ You must admit, you are an unruly specimen of an omega. Unmanageable, almost. I admit,” Sebastian said, his free hand drifting up to close around the back of Erik’s neck, where the bond bite was—Erik whimpered—”perhaps I was a little hard on you. Seeing you now, doing so well—flourishing in your pregnancy—it makes me realize that perhaps I handled you too roughly, in the earlier stages of your other pregnancies. Omegas, I know, are delicate creatures… I remember the way you would scream and writhe when I needed a little tissue sample from you—” and Sebastian’s face, with glasses and a mustache, flashes in front of Erik’s closed eyes, along with a searing, tearing, _ripping_ pain in his chest—rib spreaders and a biopsy needle, he thinks—tears start to flow again as pain flashes through his head, the awful turmoil of a memory spluttering to the surface. “Yes, no more discipline for now, Erik. Not until you give birth, at least. But at my side is the safest place you could be, my dear. The consort of the king of the new world order—the dam of the next generation—what is the price of a little pain for such an honor?”

“I don’t want it,” Erik whispered. “I want Charles.”

Sebastian’s face twisted in fury. He buried a fist in Erik’s hair and yanked until Erik was looking at him in the eye. “You would deprive our child of its birthright? You would squander the luxury it will grow in, the power it will know, for a little telepath who couldn’t save you the first time I took you? I will not let you, Erik. It is my _duty_ as your mate to do what is best for our little family. If that means keeping you chained to my bed, either suckling or bred again, I will. Don’t you want to see our child grow up? Don’t you want to be a part of its life?” Erik was sobbing now; this was worse than he could have ever imagined, to be completely at Sebastian’s mercy and kept from his child. His wrists were bruising in Sebastian’s grasp but still he fought, still he struggled to curl up around the precious girl inside of him and keep Sebastian’s touch from ever tainting the sanctity of that little life. He thought of a yellow-painted nursery and a mobile of metal creatures, now ash. Sebastian leaned forward. Erik could taste peppermint as Sebastian placed a mocking, cold kiss to Erik’s forehead. “You’ve done so well, Erik. You’ve given me an heir, at last. You will be honored in the new world, you and our children, you will want for nothing.”

“I would be your slave,” Erik said.

Fury flashed across Sebastian’s face, but it subsided into a cruel confidence. “You’ll change your mind, or Emma will change it for you. That’s what telepaths do, you know. How certain are you that what you think is really your own? That Xavier never put his sticky little fingers in your head and messed around? Do you think he was really so chaste and honorable around you, that he never fucked you and made you forget, that he doesn’t like hearing you scream like a virgin? I assure you, Erik,” he said, and he released Erik’s wrists only to shove him onto the bed; Erik scrambled backwards for the headboard, but Sebastian loomed over him, knelt in the space between his knees and shoved his legs apart until he was rubbing against Erik’s clothed and soft cock with his own, hard and hot, and Erik remembered the sense of violation whenever that cock pierced him open, “Xavier and I are not as different as you think. But it is _my_ child you are carrying, I’m the one who’ll go to hell and back for you and the baby. I’m the one who _found_ you, I’m the one who reclaimed you. You think Xavier wouldn’t just as soon drown the child in the bathtub? You’re wrong, and if you look into your heart you’ll know it.”

And, god, what if he was right? Erik had known, had _known,_ in his heart of hearts, that what Charles was offering—love, respect, the idea of never being forced into having sex again so long as Erik was _happy_ —was too good to be true, was a fantasy. Even now, his days at the mansion shimmered away from his grasp like a dream, and the certainty he’d had that Charles would never hurt him, would never lie to him, would protect him from CIA agents and well-meaning Mystiques and _Sebastian_ , was falling away like wet sand in his hands. He was an omega, he was a broken thing. That he thought he could be treated like a human, like the _treasure_ Sebastian called him—it was pure arrogance, it was rank idealism. Sebastian must have seen the dawning devastation in Erik’s eyes, for he smiled, and returned to the edge of the bed, seemingly satisfied to have frightened Erik, seemingly content not to fuck the fight out of him for now.

“You’ll join me for dinner tonight,” Sebastian said calmly. He reached for the fallen coronet. “You will wear this. You’ll wash off that _stink_ of Xavier first. And afterward, we’ll re-consummate our mating bond. For now, I’ll let you rest. You need plenty of rest, Erik, for the baby’s sake.” He stood, strode to the door, and pulled out a key; it locked now, Erik registered dimly. “And Erik. You like to pretend you're so strong… but beneath your power, you're just like any other human. Fragile. Breakable. If you try to fight me, I will rip that baby out of you and fuck another one into your belly. Now that I know you can take it, we have all the time in the world.”  
  
  
  
Hank heard the commotion long before it reached his lab—people shouting, then abruptly falling silent. It was the CIA—the safest place in the world—and yet it sounded like it was being invaded. He reached for a prototype self-defense weapon, one which used electricity to incapacitate, and all but hid behind it as the chaos seemed to peak behind the door to his lab. “Hey,” shouted Lagrange, who was on duty outside Hank’s lab today, “what the fuck did you do to them—” but after a moment Hank heard his heavy tread moving away and began to sweat. There were valuable things in his lab, research he couldn’t leave behind, no matter how much he wanted to run and hide. Advanced weaponry. The Blackbird. His serum notes.

He thought of Erik, laughing and clapping whenever he showed off how his mutation made him stronger and faster than the average human, and braced himself. He wasn’t a fighter, but he could do this. He could fight.

The door flung open, and there was—

Hank dropped the weapon. “Charles?” he asked incredulously. He’d never seen Charles within the CIA before, but—something was wrong. Charles looked haggard, his eyes bloodshot, his skin pallid and lined with exhaustion. He staggered inside—Hank glanced out into the hallway, saw the agents that stood between the front door of the compound and his lab all wandering around in various states of confusion, and took a moment to shiver at the raw _power_ coming off of Charles—the way his telepathy almost fizzed in the air around him, the way Hank’s mind went blank and fuzzy when he stepped too close to Charles. Had he really just—walked into a CIA base and incapacitated everyone in his way? “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“He took him, Hank,” Charles rasped out. He looked manic, unhinged; his hair was mussed, like he hadn’t been running his hand through it but had been tugging it out at the roots.

Hank struggled to concentrate on what Charles was saying, and not on his state. “Who took whom? Charles, you’re not making any sense—”

“Shaw,” Charles said slowly, but his fingers tapped on his thigh nearly-uncontrollably, a nervous tic that made Hank nauseous just looking at it. Charles spoke like he knew that clarity was important, but it was killing him to have to explain at all. “Took Erik. Shaw took Erik.”

Oh no. Oh god. Hank struggled for words. He’d gleaned, over the last couple of weeks that Erik had been working with them, what Erik had been to Shaw. What Shaw had _done_ to Erik. It was an omega’s worst nightmare, to be beaten into their alpha’s creature, and Erik was there again—and oh, god, the baby. Charles reached out and grasped the lapels of Hank’s lab coat. “Hank,” Charles said, a fever in his eyes, a madness in his eyes, “your prototype. Cerebro. I can’t feel him, but theoretically—if you boosted my powers—I should be able to scan the whole globe, to locate him even if he’s underwater—”

“Yes, theoretically,” Hank stuttered, “but Charles, we’ve never tried it before—I’ve never been able to get Cerebro to work the way it’s intended—”

“You’ve never had a telepath before. Just get me in the chamber, I’ll do the rest—”

“That presents its own issues! It could burn out your brain, Charles, I have no idea what kind of calibrations I’ll need to do to get it ready to deal with someone of your mental power—”

“Then _figure it out!”_ Charles screamed. Hank stumbled backwards. Charles buried his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving, and Hank took in the whole of him, when before he’d only been able to process pieces. Charles looked _so different_ ; he looked like he’d been ripped open, like he was already dead and just waiting for reality to catch up to him. “I’m sorry, Hank,” he said through his hands. “I’m sorry. But I need to use Cerebro. And if you won’t help me, I’ll _make_ you. I need to find him, before _he_ does—anything else to him. I promised,” he said, and he sounded wrecked now, he sounded ruined. “I told him that I’d keep him safe.”

Hank took a deep, shuddering breath. He didn’t point out that if this didn’t work, if he managed to kill Charles or send him into a coma, Erik would have _no one._ Charles already knew, and he thought this was the only way. “Come with me,” Hank said. “It’s in the satellite installation.”  
  
  
  
Hank set the helm on Charles’s head gently. “It would work better if we shaved your head,” he mumbled, more an aside anything else, and Charles took a deep, steadying breath, muffling the rage that flared up in him at yet _another_ delay, yet _another_ obstacle between him and Erik.

“Yes, all right,” he said, clipped, tight, “just be quick about it,” and Hank scrambled for a razor.

Hank attached the electrodes to his newly-shaved scalp, his movements now frenetic, and Charles could sense the excitement coming off of him, even in a situation so dire, even amid Hank’s fear for Erik and concern for Charles, the rush of scientific discovery no matter what the circumstances, and remembered when he was that naive, when he thought that there could be nothing that blinded him to the wonders and horrors of humanity. He knew better now; his tunnel vision was focused unerringly on Erik, on Erik and the baby, on Erik and the baby and _Shaw_ and whatever he was doing to them, and he couldn’t even spare a stray thought for the knowledge that if this worked, it would revolutionize the science of psionics, it would alter the way he understood his own ability forever.

At the control panel, Hank flipped a series of switches. “When you locate his mind,” he was saying, “the machine should be able to record a set of coordinates.” Behind him, Charles heard an EEG machine start to record; he saw the lights dim as power diverted to the machine.

The helmet lit up. And suddenly he could hear— _everything._

So many voices, all with a clarity he’d never experienced before, as though he’d been a man half-blind all his life and had just put on glasses for the first time. The music of emotion transmuted into _thought_ , lucid and crisp, people thinking about meals and plans, people hiding terrible secrets and inexpressible joys. He staggered against the railing that had been set up, his hands grasping wildly at the helmet, careful not to disturb the wires and dials worked into the plastic surface of the helm itself. It was as though he were standing in the world’s largest orchestra pit, French horns behind and bassoons ahead, the crisp sounds of music crashing all around him, every instrument playing a different tune and every tune a coherent voice, he was swept along in the bass notes and everyday rages and sorrows and loves and happinesses crashed over him; it was a chaotic medley of sound, so loud and coming from all directions that it turned into color behind his closed eyes, to a sharp metallic taste on his tongue. No. He’d bitten his lip. It was so difficult to distinguish between what was real and what was in his mind, now that that mind had expanded exponentially to encompass the globe.

“Can you find Erik with this?” Hank was asking. It took a colossal effort for Charles to wrench himself back to reality.

 _You could become a_ god _with this_ , he didn’t say. He took a deep, steadying breath, reminding himself of his arms, his legs, the prickle of Cerebro sat on his shaved head, the chasm in his heart that had opened when Frost had asked, _Do you know where your mate is_ —all of this physical sensation grounding him to his body in Langley, Virginia, fixing the wide net of his mind to a tiny pinprick of matter. He refocused, drew outward, saw the world from a distance, like watching the ocean breaking upon a cliff from a nearby shore instead of being tossed and buffeted about by the waves, and felt his heart start to steady.

And then he plunged back into it, searching for Erik’s mind—that well-controlled harmony, thrumming with feeling roiling just beneath the surface, so much rich tension and emotion packed into each note, as if a miniature symphony sang in his head at all times. Human minds were easy to discard—they all had a similar quality to them at a distance, not quite hollowness, though up close they were as vibrant and sparking as any mutant mind—mutant minds jumped out at him, _louder_ almost than human minds, but at a glance he could tell they weren’t the one he was seeking and cast them aside.

He scanned the globe by longitude, going west to east, and when he reached the South China Sea he was beginning to panic—Shaw had only taken Erik _that morning,_ surely he couldn’t have gotten to another continent by now, but he’d already scanned the whole of the Americas and nothing—but it wasn’t until he found himself back in Virginia that he despaired. “He’s not there, Hank, _he’s not there_ —” His breath caught in his throat like he was breathing sand, he choked on the horror of it—god, if Shaw had killed him—had punished him for his time with Charles, and had maybe gone too far—the grief that had nearly swallowed Charles whole before yawned again, a dark maw waiting to encase him. God, the baby. He never should have reached out for Erik’s mind when he’d felt it that night in Miami, never should have tempted Erik back to his side. Even when Erik had been Shaw’s, he’d been _alive_ —the child had been alive—

“Charles. Charles!” Hank sounded frantic. Charles resurfaced. His face was wet. Hank dabbed at his nose, and Charles realized dully that it was blood as well as tears staining his face. “Don’t—panic, Charles, okay? You told me that Shaw had a way of blocking your telepathy before—could he be using that again?”

Slowly, Charles swam back to consciousness. Right. The metal band Erik had been wearing, the one that made him dull and hard to read from a distance, unless Charles applied himself. He scrubbed absently at his face with his sleeve and tried to think, tried to ignore the way in which his mind was spread thinly like a cast net over the entire globe. “Right. You’re right. But then—how do I find him, Hank? I can’t look for Shaw—he has a helmet that keeps out telepathy the way the _thing_ I took off Erik does—if I can’t find him with Cerebro, it might, it might be _months_ before we have another lead on him, and by then—who knows what he could do to Erik—”

Hank bit his lip. “Is there anyone else you can look for? Maybe one of his lackeys?”

 _Raven,_ Charles thought dazedly, but no sooner had he thought it than he was looking through a woman’s eyes as she turned the pages of a newspaper. A cafe—he recognized the city—Bogotá. He slipped into Raven’s mind, easier than he’d ever had before, so silently and stealthily he thought she probably wouldn’t even notice. She hadn’t seen Shaw since he’d sent her to fetch Erik. She’d been shaken by Charles’s accusations; hadn’t been able to risk going back and interrogating Shaw about the truth of his relationship with Erik, not when she knew what he could do, so she disappeared instead, shifted into someone other than her usual blond pale form and took off to Europe. She _believed_ in what he was doing, was the issue. She couldn’t go back to him, not now that he knew—a Nazi, god—but maybe she could do some small thing to help mutants by herself. Maybe she could prove herself to Charles, Charles who had changed so much, Charles who had _looked for her_ —

He pulled back. It was too much, he couldn’t spare more than a thought on Raven, not when she was safe and Erik was still in such terrible danger. Maybe the man who could create tornadoes in his palms? He’d only felt his mind once, but it would probably be easier to find him than the teleporter, whose mind was slippery and old and jerked out of Charles’s grasp every time he poofed away—but what if Shaw had asked Frost to armor them against telepathic intrusion? Charles’s mind was so abstracted right now that if Frost had shielded Quested with even the lightest bit of armor, he might not be able to pluck him out from the masses at all. Fuck, but he had to try, there was no one else—

Except—

The baby.

He’d felt her mind. Just spare notes among the trembling viola-string of Erik’s, a whisper of discontent there and a murmur of sleepiness here, less thought than wordless feeling, not even enough self-concept to think of herself as an _I._ But he’d memorized her. The tiny melody of her little mind, he knew its tune better even than Erik’s, he’d spent the long hours before the flight to Russia listening to her think and dream in Erik’s belly, soft tinkling sounds he couldn’t understand but which had brought tears to his eyes all the same. Maybe the baby wouldn’t be shielded.

He centered himself again and moved swiftly, west to east. The minds of babies were deceptively small, because underneath the faintness of that sound was a wealth of feeling. Babies felt so _much,_ so _loudly,_ and Charles had to coast the currents of rage and disconsolate want, of bright-eyed delight and red-faced squalling fear. He skipped from mind to mind, casting about, his heart pounding his chest, _please,_ please be alive—

He found her off an isolated stretch of coast off North Carolina.

She was slumbering peacefully. She dreamed of her father’s voice, as heard through layers of flesh and fluid, lulling, soft. Charles flickered to the consciousness wrapped all around her, and was hit by a crashing wave of fear and horror that didn’t touch the baby in his belly, though if he remained stressed for any longer, she would surely notice. He slipped into Erik’s eyes and saw the submarine’s dining area, a low table set with food, and Shaw—

—Erik was straddling Shaw’s lap. Shaw had one arm around Erik’s waist, the other plucking at the morsels set out on the table, occasionally bringing a tidbit to Erik’s mouth; Erik knew what was expected of him, and so he sucked at Shaw’s fingers, his heart fluttering like a hummingbird all the while, his mind racing with threats, to both himself and the baby, with the knowledge of what would happen if he disobeyed, and he couldn’t, not again, he couldn’t lose this one, not when Charles had felt her mind, not when she was so _real_ and present inside of him. He felt horribly, sickeningly lucid, he wasn’t walking around in the same haze of obedience and devotion that had been blanketing him the last time he’d walked these halls, and his mind ticked along and saw no way to escape, not without putting the baby at grave risk. If he died, so be it, he would _rather_ die than be Shaw’s whore again, but the baby. The baby. And how long would this presence of mind last, before Emma returned, and stripped him of his memories, burned them down just like the mansion—if those memories were even real—

 _Erik,_ Charles thought, _don’t react._

Erik breathed steadily. Shaw stroked a greedy finger down his face. Erik didn’t blink.

 _I’m here,_ Charles told him. Mixed joy and fear had risen in him, now that he knew Erik was alive, now that he saw how close he was to Shaw. Shaw was wearing the godawful helmet, and Erik’s mind had that muted, slippery quality again, but it was no match for Charles’s reach in Cerebro; it had been enough to hide Erik from him when he could give every mind across the globe only a perfunctory glance, but not now that Charles knew where he was. _I’m coming to get you. Are you moving?_

A thought about the stillness of the submarine flashed across Erik’s mind even before he could project an answer. _Good,_ Charles thought. _I’m only a few hundred miles away. I’m coming for you, Erik. I won’t let him hurt you._

 _He’ll kill you,_ Erik thought dully.

_Not if I kill him first._

_Charles,_ Erik thought, and didn’t think anything else for a while. _Charles,_ he thought again, and this time it had a sort of dizzy quality to it, as though Erik had been spinning the name in circles, turning it over and over in his mind, examining it for truth. _I’m scared._

Charles took a deep breath and swallowed. _Don’t be,_ he said, projecting as much reassurance and calm as he could when he himself was so frantic, so desperate, so fragile. _Just stay alive until I get there, all right? Do whatever he asks of you._

Erik’s thoughts flashed to a memory— _we’ll re-consummate our mating bond_ —and Charles shuddered, feeling Erik’s muted horror at the thought. More wistful feeling than thought, Charles sensed Erik begging for forgiveness from him. _Oh, my love,_ he thought, _there’s nothing to forgive,_ and he wrenched himself away from Erik’s mind before he could spend any longer in its seductive silences and sounds, shoving at Erik before he left as much fierce determination and protectiveness and _love_ as he could, a promise made more powerfully than one of words that he would see Erik free if it was the last thing he did.

He came back to himself gasping, his head pounding, and the lights flickering all around him—Hank lifted off the helmet and said, “I got it. I got the coordinates,” a tentative smile on his face, and Charles only nodded at him, shakily stepping off of the platform but still clinging to the railing to hold himself upright. God, he was tired, but he couldn’t rest yet—he had to get to North Carolina as fast as possible, before Shaw—before he put his filthy _hands_ on Erik again. He stumbled toward the entrance to the satellite installation, Hank trailing after him. 

“Charles,” he said hesitantly, and then with more strength when Charles ignored him, “Charles, I know you’re going to go after him right now, but… I have something else I think might help.”  
  
  
  
When the last delicacy was cleared from the table—Erik had lost his appetite again, though Sebastian had forced him to swallow down his share, “for the baby”—Sebastian lingered on the couch, undoubtedly drawing out the anticipation before he claimed Erik again. He had slipped his hand under Erik’s shirt and was tracing patterns on Erik’s skin. Erik put his head on Sebastian’s shoulder and tried to think about nothing except the life within him. The baby had started shifting again during dinner. Awake, Erik thought, and tried to send soothing thoughts down to the child, though he wasn’t a telepath. _Go to sleep,_ Erik thought. You don’t want to be awake for this.

At last Sebastian rose and led Erik through the living area to the control room, past which was their cabin. “Take us down,” Sebastian said to Janos. “Azazel should have finished provisioning us by now.”

But instead of nodding, Janos stared at the navigation screen. He reached out for the controls, but—Erik had never been allowed to learn how to control the yacht or the sub, but years of watching Janos and Azazel and Emma at the helm allowed to recognize when someone was docking, not submerging. With a faint _bump_ Erik could feel the ramp extend to lower onto the planks of the deserted pier. Janos stood and without a nod or acknowledgment to Sebastian began to move toward the hatch. He unsealed the hatch and climbed out, leaving a confused Erik behind. Sebastian, though, grinned, a grin showing all his teeth.

“Your lover is here,” Sebastian said, something glittering and cold underlying his tone. Erik swallowed. It had been less than an hour since Charles had spoken to his mind—where had he come from? How had he gotten here so quickly?—and mingled relief and horror swept through him, catching him in their tides. Charles was going to die. Charles was going to rescue him. Sebastian could see the conflict on his face, because he smiled, a smile Erik was familiar with, a smile that told him _pain_ was imminent, and ran his knuckles down Erik’s cheek. “I’ll deal with him, _schatz_ , don’t fret.” He stepped to the ladder and began to climb up after Janos. When he reached the hatch, he paused and said, “If you follow me, I’ll make you regret it,” so lightly and kindly that Erik could _see_ his punishment playing out before his eyes, and Sebastian slipped out onto the pier, letting the heavy metal of the hatch clang down behind him.  
  
  
  
The tornado-man had been easy enough to put to sleep. Charles had just had to smash through the barrier Frost had constructed, take hold of the man’s mind, and _squeeze_ until he dropped off into unconsciousness so solid that he wouldn’t wake until Charles told him to. The teleporter, who’d been on the pier supervising the loading of heavy crates of food and drink into the cargo bay, had been more difficult; the moment he’d noticed Charles, he’d vanished, and appeared in front of him, and Charles had only had a heartbeat to grasp hold of his mind and tell him to _stop_ before the tail pierced his heart. The teleporter crumpled to the ground before him and with Hank’s help, Charles hauled him to the side, planning to leave them there until the CIA could deal with them—or not deal with them, whatever happened.

“Stay in the Blackbird,” Charles told Hank. “You’ll be safer there.” He hesitated. God, he wanted to tell Hank to get Erik at any cost, but that wasn’t fair to him— “If you can find a way to get Erik out of there, take it. Otherwise, if I fall… get yourself out of here, all right? Go back to the CIA. See if—if they can help.”

Hank looked torn—he cared about Erik too—but he saw the wisdom of it. He wasn’t trained for battle. He was strong and fast, but he’d never hurt anymore before, let alone killed; and Shaw was so strong, from what Erik had told them both he knew that Shaw could burn him up in an instant until he was just vapor on the wind. “Be careful,” he told Charles, and Charles nodded, not really listening. Hank returned to the Blackbird and Charles stood on the deserted pier and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.

Sebastian Shaw climbed out of the hatch and jumped down to the wooden pier, smiling. He looked like a professional in his neat suit, like anyone on the street, except. Even from this distance, Charles could _smell_ Erik’s fear and distress clinging to Shaw like cologne. He walked like a man who was utterly confident that nothing could touch him. And he was wearing the helmet. Where his mind should have been was like a void, like a black hole sucking light in and letting nothing out; Charles probed at the blank spot and felt almost sick as the metal seemed to swallow up his telepathy and reach out for him, hungry. He had a gun and Erik’s knife on him, but he knew that neither of those would do much good until he found a way to suppress Shaw’s mutation.

“Charles Xavier, I presume,” Shaw said, drawing closer. “It’s _so_ good to meet you.”

“Where is he?” Charles said.

Shaw smiled, a reptilian smirk that sent Charles’s hindbrain screaming. Here was a predator; here was a _monster_ made flesh. “We don’t have to be enemies, you and I. I see you got the better of Emma. There would be a place by side for a telepath as powerful as you. For a mutant as extraordinary as you.”

“You _raped_ my _mate,”_ Charles snarled, forcing down the scream that wanted to rise in his throat. He wanted to rage, he wanted to list off all of Shaw’s crimes and inflict pain for every one: he’d stolen Erik, made Charles think that he was dead, he’d taken their baby from them, he’d stripped Erik of his free will and glorious mind and everything that made him _Erik._ He’d invaded their sanctuary and proved Charles a liar and a fraud of an alpha again. Charles wanted to burst with the injustice of it, that anyone should suffer so but especially _Erik,_ who had already suffered so much at the hands of this man, at the hands of his fellow Nazis, Erik who was so good and didn’t believe it because of what this man had done to him.

“Rape is such an ugly word,” Shaw said. “If you’d seen the way he begged for me, spread his legs for me—”

Though he knew it would do no good, Charles’s telepathy lashed out. Shaw laughed; he must have seen Charles’s effort on his face. “He’s an exquisite creature, isn’t he, Xavier? I can see why you went to such lengths to get him back. But he’s not worth this. You’ll die if you try to stand against me, I know he’s told you so. And the future I’m building… you’re on the wrong side of history, Xavier. Don’t throw all your potential away for a pretty whore.”

“Don’t call him that,” Charles said through gritted teeth. He was straining so hard against the helmet he was surprised he hadn’t given himself another nosebleed.

“He’s mine by rights,” Shaw said with relish. He could see how much this was affecting him, Charles realized. His emotions must have been written all over his face, his rage and his hurt and his desperation. “I had him far longer than you ever did. It’s my mating mark he bears, it’s my child in his belly—”

“You _killed_ our child!” Charles screamed.

Shaw sneered. “He was _mine_ , even then, even when he was yours, he’s _been_ mine since the first time I cut him open on the operating table, since I unleashed his powers. _I_ am the one who shaped him, who made him the weapon he is— _I_ am the one who should have had his first time, his first heat, his first pregnancy.” His expression flattened into a smooth blankness. “Really, if you’re going to succeed in this new world order, you’re going to have to let him go. He’s not worth dying for, Xavier. He’s not worth how I will make you _suffer_ before you die, for touching what was _mine._ ”

Distantly, Charles could feel another mind, beyond Hank in the Blackbird and the unconscious men passed out behind him, beyond the sucking absence of Shaw. Erik had climbed out the hatch and was stepping onto the pier. His mind thrummed, a high note of terror—he was disobeying Shaw’s direct orders—but he had to see, he had to know. Charles didn’t let on that he saw him, but sent a mental wave of reassurance and love, and Erik responded, thinly, hesitantly, with a slight lessening of the fear that engulfed him. “You’re wrong,” Charles said lowly. “He’s worth everything.”  
  
  
  
Charles. Charles was here.

At first Erik almost didn’t recognize him—he’d shaved his head? and was wearing a shoulder holster, an accoutrement of violence that Erik had never seen on him before. He didn’t glance at Erik, but Erik felt a gentle tapping in his mind, as though Charles were asking for permission, and hesitantly, cautiously, let him in. Charles rewarded him with a burst of warmth, a mental promise that everything was going to be all right. Erik wished he could believe him.

“I can see you aren’t going to be reasonable about this,” Sebastian sighed. “How about this? Join me, and we can share him. You can fuck him when I’m done with him. It would be a great honor, sharing the consort of the emperor of the new world.” He smiled, cruel. “Perhaps it’ll even be your child he’s carrying, next time. A telepath and a magnetopath… I wonder what powers would bloom from your union.”

Erik’s breath caught in his throat. An image flashed in his mind, of Sebastian moving inside him and Charles’s fingers alongside, before he slid in, and Erik was screaming with pain and exhaustion; Sebastian had fucked him with toys like that before, and now he was offering it to Charles, and for a moment Erik was terrified that Charles would take it. But Charles’s face was twisted in rage, rage that Erik had never seen on him before, not even when the agent had cornered him on the grounds, not even when Raven had come to get him, he knew at once that Charles _hated_ Sebastian with every fiber of his being, and that explained the sheer _power_ of the telepathy pulsing inside his mind, clearer and louder than it had ever been before. He’d taken the coronet off before crawling out of the hatch, and so Charles’s feelings rang in him clear as a bell; he was projecting his sheer desire to rip Sebastian apart from limb to limb to everyone within his range. Erik pressed himself against the metal walls of the submarine. It was darkening swiftly; sunset was quick this time of year, at this latitude. Charles’s face was half in shadow, and it only made him look strange and alien, as did the anger he couldn’t hide that crossed his face at Sebastian’s suggestion.

“You’re _sick,”_ Charles spat, and Erik closed his eyes in relief. He hadn’t really thought that Charles would—but what did he really know about Charles, he thought with a sickening rush of remembrance as Sebastian’s words bobbed to the surface of his mind, except that he was a telepath and wanted Erik? And wouldn’t, Erik thought with a flush of warmth, compromise with Sebastian for anything. He rubbed at his belly, wishing he were that brave. 

Sebastian sighed. “You’re a disappointment,” he said, dismay clear in his voice, and then—

—and then he was moving. Charles reacted quickly, reaching for his gun, but all Sebastian had to do was touch him and Charles was blasted backwards, flying back almost the whole length of the pier. “Charles!” Erik cried out in horror. For a moment, when Charles had been knocked backwards, he’d been torn from Erik’s mind. He returned to it in a moment, dazed but comforting. _Everything will be all right,_ he whispered, and Erik felt his eyes prickle. 

How could Charles promise that? He was so afraid, for Charles and the baby and… for himself. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything for his body other than a vague interest in keeping it healthy and pain-free, since he saw it as something more than a tool and a toy, Charles had _ruined_ him and now he was going to die before he could teach Erik what to do with all these feelings and wants and passions.

Sebastian laughed as Charles struggled to stand. Without glancing back at Erik, he said, pleasure dripping from his voice, “Oh, good, _schatz._ You’re here. I want you to see this.”

He strode toward Charles, languid and unhurried. Charles, on one knee, fumbled for his gun; Sebastian was there in an eyeblink, knocking it out of his hand—Charles cried out, and Erik could hear the crack of broken bone even from where he was pressed against the side of the submarine. “Charles!” he screamed again, and Charles sent another wave of reassurance, weaker this time, as though his telepathy was as tired and broken as his body. Sebastian aimed a kick at him, and Charles skidded further backwards; they were getting farther away, but Sebastian picked him up and tossed him back toward Erik. He wanted him to see. He wanted him to witness Charles’s death, every gory detail.

Erik knelt at Charles’s side. Charles was stirring, but blood was pouring from a cut on his head where it had struck the boards of the pier, the fingers of his right hand were twisted at an odd angle, he blinked blood from his eyes and struggled to focus. “Erik,” he breathed. His presence in Erik’s head was fuzzy, unsteady, transferring Charles’s dizziness and nausea to Erik. He reached up and brushed his good hand against Erik’s face. Erik realized he was crying again when Charles’s hand came away wet.

Sebastian laughed cruelly. He prowled toward them, easy, loping, like a predator. “Know this, Xavier,” he said, “that I’ll have your Erik right here, in a pool of your own cooling blood. Perhaps you’ll still be alive to see it. But there’ll be nothing you can do to stop me from taking what’s _mine._ ”

“Not me,” Charles rasped. And perhaps because they were mentally linked—perhaps because Erik still _understood_ Charles, an understanding built up over months together at the mansion, laid over a foundation of paired souls that he couldn’t remember but still _felt_ , still _knew—_ he knew at once what Charles was asking. But he couldn’t. Sebastian would hurt him—Sebastian would hurt _the baby_ —his rage would be terrible to behold, even more than this cool, amused anger that was pulsing from him now. He was confident in his victory, and Erik knew better than to think that he was strong enough to stand between Sebastian and what he wanted.

 _I’m sorry,_ he thought shakily. _Charles, I’m so, so sorry, I can’t, I just can’t._

Charles’s eyes fluttered closed. _Okay,_ he thought back. _Okay._

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

_I forgive you. Of course I forgive you,_ Charles sighed, and the faintest of smiles played about his lips, cracked where he’d bitten them during one of his falls. He forced himself to his knees, brushing off Erik’s questing, worried hands. _I just wish I’d been able to protect you. Like I should have. Still, if I can’t… it’s not a bad way to go, in your arms._

 _Charles. Charles._ Erik was sobbing now, he could hear himself, and Sebastian was laughing—he was close enough to kick Charles, and his foot struck him in the jaw and Charles reeled backward into Erik’s arms—Sebastian was using only human strength, but it was enough to daze Charles, to unsettle the telepathic bond swimming between Charles and Erik once more. “Stop,” Erik begged Sebastian. “Stop, please, let him go, I’ll be good, I promise, I’ll be so good—”

“You’ll be good whether I kill him or not,” Sebastian said. “Because you know better now, don’t you? You know what happens to those who defy me.”

He reached down and picked Charles up by the throat. Charles didn’t resist. Erik screamed.

 _Sorry, sorry,_ Charles thought, and _I love you._

“No powers,” Sebastian gloated. “No weapons. You were inferior all along, Xavier. You never deserved him. What do you have left? Nothing.”

Strength crystallized in Erik’s soul.

“He has me,” Erik whispered, and with more effort than he’d ever expended in his life, he turned his power to the helm Sebastian was wearing and dragged it off his head.

He almost didn’t recognize what he saw in Sebastian’s eyes then, though he’d seen it every time he’d looked in a mirror for years. The narrowing of the pupils, the flaring of the nostrils, before he froze—before Charles wrapped a hand around his wrist where Sebastian was holding him up and froze him—it was fear, Erik realized dimly. It was the knowledge that someone had you in their power and there was nothing you could do about it. Charles wrenched himself free and stumbled backward on the deck, into Erik’s arms, but he almost didn’t seem to feel Erik’s touch, his face was twisted in such concentration, melting into terrible rage. Sebastian stayed frozen, his lips slightly parted, not even his eyes mobile; all the static fear Erik could read was in the slightest unmoving crease of his eye, in the tension of his cheek.

Charles drew himself upright. His hands were shaking as he reached down to his ankle and revealed a knife that had been strapped to his calf. Good steel, Erik could feel. Solid, practical, very sharp. The folds of the steel that had hardened into something as smooth and cold as sheet glass—he could feel the way magnetic force bent around it, distorted around the flat of the blade. Charles drew the knife and strode forward. He’d twisted his ankle. He was shaking.

But his hands didn’t flinch as he drove the blade through Sebastian’s throat.

Erik felt it, the instant Sebastian died. He screamed as the bond between them snapped—not sure, suddenly, where he was, standing on a dock somewhere in the southern United States as cicadas sang and flies buzzed their honey-evening song, or tied down in a crypt in Warsaw, screaming his head off as Charles was ripped from him—it was silk on his skin, it was harsh rope around his wrists—it was the worst thing he’d ever felt, or the best—he fell to his knees and screamed and screamed, splintery wood digging into his knees and palms as his mind wrenched free from the tether that had connected him to Sebastian for all these years. His face was wet.

Charles was by him an instant, trying to calm him—his face was pale and shocked, like he thought Erik’s reaction was emotional, instead of purely biological—Erik set his eyes on Sebastian’s corpse, which had slumped to the ground the moment his mind had vanished, unable to keep the body upright any longer, and crawled forward, tearing away from Charles’s hands, which were trying to soothe, to stop. He had to—he had to—his fingers shaking, he wrapped his hands around the hilt and drew it back, watching blood spurt sluggishly from the wound. It stained his shirtsleeves and ruddied his hands, but he didn’t care, he was transfixed by the blade, the flashing flat of the knife that had freed him, and he raised the blade—

—and brought it down—

—and the next thing he knew Charles was dragging him backwards. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Charles was gasping in his ear, “he’s dead, he can’t hurt you any more,” and Erik slanted his eyes upward dully to see that he had stabbed and stabbed until Sebastian’s chest was a gory mess, he had broken ribs and slashed open organs, he had turned Charles’s neat murder into a horror scene, and he was sobbing, he was scrabbling at the swell of his belly and crying, and Charles tucked him neatly into the lines of his body and hushed him. “It’s okay,” he said, and seemed at a loss for what other words could soothe the gaping hole in Erik’s soul, but it felt good, it was a good pain, like rebreaking a bone that had healed improperly, a clean, purifying pain that had burned through something festering and ugly on his soul. 

Charles pulled his sobbing, twisted, shaking form close and just breathed, allowed Erik to match his gasping breath to Charles’s steady, if fast, ones, allowing him to soak in that apples-and-sage scent. The contact made him ache. He didn’t know how long they sat there, on that dock where night had fallen, with the body lying just feet from them, but Charles eventually pulled him upright and said, gently, “Hank’s waiting for us, my love. We’ll… we’ve got to get you home before your heat starts.”

Slowly, Charles coaxed him to his feet. His arms still around Erik, he stepped carefully around Sebastian’s body. He was halfway off the pier when Erik slipped from his grasp.

Charles turned. “Erik…?”

But Erik was staring at the helmet at his feet. He leaned down. Picked it up.

“Erik,” Charles said, pain distorting his voice. “What… what are you—?”

Erik put it on.

At once, Charles vanished from his head like a mirage in a sandstorm, blown away. Erik blinked through the metal framing his face. He twitched his fingers; the bloody knife soared from where they had abandoned it next to Sebastian’s body and fell into his hand. His powers felt good, better than they had in years, like he’d broken a chain in his mind. He watched dispassionately as Charles staggered, confused devastation laced through his expression, at being suddenly locked out of his own mind. He reached for Erik’s hand. “Erik! Erik…”

“Don’t,” Erik whispered, and tightened his grip on the knife.

Charles stopped. “Erik?” he said tremulously. “Erik, talk to me. Please—take that thing off. I can’t, I can’t feel you—it’s like you’re dead—please—”

“He said that you used me too,” Erik said, his voice resonating strangely to his own ears. He sounded very distant. Very calm. “He said you fucked me and made me forget. He said I can’t trust you. I can’t trust my own thoughts around you. How do I know you’re better than him?”

Charles was crying now. Erik watched. Everything felt very far away. “But you trust him?” Charles said, his voice breaking.

“No,” Erik said. Unspoken were the words: _But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right._

For the first time—the _first_ time—in his clear memories, he was free. _Free._ The word vibrated in his head, filled with power and potential. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted it until it perched in his hand, vibrant and skittish, like it could fly away at any time. _We’ve got to get you home before your heat starts._ Now that he had it, why would he give it up again? To be bonded to—to a telepath—someone who could do to him directly what Sebastian had needed Emma for before—someone whose power over him, once established, could never be broken. Why? _Why?_ Why would he?

He realized he was only waiting for Charles to give him a reason. One reason.

“Please,” Erik said, “please. Tell me why.”

And Charles seemed to understand, even though he was shut out of Erik’s mind. His expression crumpled. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t. Because there’s no way you can know that I’m telling the truth. I swear to you, Erik, that I love you—that I _adore you—_ that I would never hurt you, whether you knew it or not.” Erik listened, feeling lamost dazed. He had been expecting—he didn’t know what he’d been expecting. (Wouldn’t it be better? Even if he was treated the way Sebastian had been treating him, wouldn’t it be nicer to forget? To live in a fantasy world where Charles was kind and gentle to him the way his memories of the last seven and a half months seemed to suggest? But—the baby. He couldn’t let the baby be hurt.) “But you’ve had too much of alphas making you promises and then breaking them. I’m guilty of it, too.” His face was twisted with pain. It looked like he was crumbling, like so much sand. “I promised you I’d protect you. And I failed you. And then I promised you that he’d never get his hands on you again. And I failed you again.

“I don’t have anything, Erik. I don’t have any proof. I don’t have any promises. I’m all out. The only thing I can give you is this: I won’t follow you. If you go, I’ll let you.” He was sobbing now. “Please don’t go. Please don’t go.”

And Erik pictured it—

It would be hard. It would be almost impossible. But it would be freedom.

He looked back at Charles, who was staring at him like a starved man, like he was memorizing him. Blood on his hands, on his shirtsleeves, smeared over his belly and all. Dressed in the clothes of another alpha and all. Pregnant by another alpha’s seed and all.

This, Erik realized, was real. He was wearing the helmet. This was real.

He reached up and took the helmet off.  
  
  
  
AFTER.

“Erik? Mmm… Erik…”

Charles groped for his mate but found only empty bedsheets. Panic flaring in him, he sat bolt upright and cast his mind out for Erik’s, following the slim golden braid of their bond down the hall, to… the nursery. He tugged sharply in confirmation—perhaps too sharply, because he could feel Erik’s wince before determined submission, a triggered response, swept over him and he let Charles paw through his mind docilely. In the nursery, rocking a fussy baby back to sleep. Not vanished. Not taken. Not having taken Nina and run from another alpha who might be controlling him, as Charles knew Erik had considered from time to time, thoughts that pained Charles but which he had no choice but to let be, lest he become as bad as Shaw.

Charles could roll over and go back to sleep, but Nina was so rarely fussy at night. He ran a hand through his hair, which was still short but growing out, pushed back the covers and made his way to the nursery, listening to the soft murmur of Erik’s melody grow louder with proximity. _It’s okay_ , Erik tried to tell him, _I’ve got her,_ but waking next to cold sheets had been a shock to the system and Charles was wide awake now. He stopped in the doorway of the nursery, watching Erik take small, swaying steps as he bounced Nina in his arms, who was silent now but would make unhappy noises whenever Erik gestured to put her down.

Charles scanned her mind. Just the ire of a child who was, paradoxically, too tired to fall asleep. Erik had it well in hand. Still, he stepped closer, arms out to wrap around his little world—

—and Erik flinched back. Charles stopped. Erik looked regretful immediately, and stepped closer to Charles, tucking himself into Charles’s body. Slowly, hesitantly, Charles let his arms fall around Erik, waiting for another flinch, and, when one didn’t come, holding him and their daughter close, swaying with the same tiny movements Erik was using to get her to fall back asleep.

“Are you all right?” Charles murmured.

“Fine,” Erik whispered back. “It’s this one who can’t sleep.”

As if recognizing that she was being talked about, Nina cast a chubby little fist up to smack against Erik’s nose. He looked down at her, offended, which was the most precious thing Charles had seen since noon, so he pulled them both close and rewarded them with twin kisses on the forehead. Nina was beautiful. Though an objective observer might point out that she looked more like Shaw than like Erik, all Charles could see of her were the Erik parts—the bright, inquisitive eyes, the shape of her ears, her scowl. When she scowled, the resemblance was unmistakable. “I could—” he wiggled his fingers, but Erik shook his head.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” he said, too-quickly. “I’m—I’m sorry for waking you—normally it’s no trouble at all to get her back to bed—”

Charles frowned. “Normally? Does she often wake during the night?”

“I—yes, but I, I take care of her.” Erik was tripping over his own words now. Something had frightened him, and Charles wasn’t sure quite what, only that he wanted it to _stop_ , if at all possible. “This is the first time she’s woken you up in a long time, isn’t it? I take care of her. You don’t—you don’t need to be angry—”

Fuck. “I’m not angry,” Charles said, appalled, and trying his best not to sound it, though he was _furious_ , though he nearly wished Shaw were dead so he could kill him all over again, more painfully this time. “Erik—I _want_ to help you take care of her.”

“I didn’t want to burden you,” Erik whispered. “Any more than I already do, I mean.”

“She’s never a burden, and neither are you,” Charles whispered, pain stretching his voice taut. He understood, of course. An abused omega with another alpha’s child, of course Erik’s instinct was to make sure that Nina was never a bother, that Charles never had a reason to cast them both out, or worse, cast her out and keep him. And Erik was still a creature more of instinct than logic some days. “Have you—have you been waking up to take care of her while I slept?”

Erik looked at him mutely, which was enough of an answer. Charles buried his face into the crook of Erik’s neck. Between them, Nina made soft noises of discontent, and without thinking he reached up and smoothed his fingers across the crown of her head, which got her to settle, no powers necessary. “I love her,” Charles said, though he had a feeling it would take many more repetitions before Erik could even begin to believe him. “I love _you_ ,” and this, at least, Erik seemed to believe, with the way he sighed into Charles’s hair and rested his cheek briefly on his temple. “I want to help.” He bit his lip. He hated giving Erik orders, but— “Next time, wake me up, all right? We’ll tend to her together.”

Erik visibly struggled with the thought, two pieces of his conditioning clashing: the urge to anticipate in his alpha’s needs and the desire to follow his alpha’s orders. “All right,” he finally said, and a gentle brush of Charles’s mind against Erik sounded in cool tones of resignation. Charles kissed him in gratitude and let him out of his arms; Erik immediately began swaying again, humming something low and soft that joined joyously, harmoniously, with the music of his mind. Charles slumped into the rocking chair and watched him sway with half-lidded eyes, eyes that grew heavier and heavier as Erik sang, “Odpocznij moje dziecko,  
Dzień się skończył…”

Erik didn’t shake him awake so much as he pulled, gently, on the bond between them to coax him back into consciousness. “You’ll get a crick in your back if you sleep like that,” he whispered. Charles blinked his eyes open. Nina was back in her bassinet, the tiny painted metal animals of her mobile twinkling above her. Erik was kneeling beside him, and Charles smiled at him sleepily, perfectly content to linger in that moment for just a touch longer, and Erik smiled back, just a small thing, but real.

“Let’s go back to bed,” Erik murmured, and Charles yawned and leaned up and kissed Erik, a gentle press of lips, a pure show of affection and love, his fingers resting on the line of Erik’s jaw and tilting his face toward him, Erik opening and blossoming under the kiss beautifully. Charles broke it off and rested his forehead against Erik’s; Erik was breathing slowly, but there was a hitch in the rhythm of his breath that spoke of arousal, and Charles turned his head and nibbled on the lobe of Erik’s ear, relishing in the sharp intake of breath that earned him.

“Yes,” he sighed. “Bed.”

Hand in hand, they stepped back down the hallway, Charles’s thumb tracing a line down Erik’s knuckles. They were still holding hands when Charles pressed Erik down onto the bed, still holding hands when Charles, clumsily, one-handed, removed Erik’s pajamas and tossed them aside, still holding hands when Charles kissed him as he pressed into him gently, so gently, still holding hands as they made love as the night lightened slowly into shades of gray. Erik trembled and shook underneath Charles, but Charles tightened his grip on Erik’s fingers and he shuddered and subsided.

It could be hard for Erik still, though he had been the one who had pushed their relationship forward at every step. There were days where he couldn’t stand being penetrated, and had needed Charles to show him how to fuck an alpha; there were nights, like tonight, when he _wanted,_ craved the sensation of an alpha over him and an alpha cock inside of him, but still struggled and fought on instinct. It helped when he had something to cling to, the headboard or Charles’s fingers interlaced with his own. Some leverage to push back against Charles’s thrusts, some control as control was stripped from him. He still didn’t like to be knotted, and Charles missed that, the way he had finally managed to coax Erik into enjoying it when they’d been together before, all that work wasted, but not as much as he joyously reveled in having Erik _back,_ in Erik choosing _him,_ even after all that he’d been through, even if he never asked Charles to knot him again. Erik came first, his thighs clenching hard around Charles’s waist as come dribbled from his cock, and Charles adjusted his pace, moving faster, deeper, as Erik keened and writhed and pushed back onto him, dizzy and lust-shaken but wanting to give Charles pleasure. His knot flushed full, but he took care not to do more than press lightly against Erik's cunt; just enough that he could feel the pressure there, feel how much Charles wanted him, but not enough to actually risk penetrating or hurting him with it.

He reached out gently and buried his mind in Erik's, feeling him vibrate sweetly around the pulse of his thoughts, and that brush of _Erik_ in his mind, that reminder that his beloved was here with him and shaking apart with ecstasy that _Charles_ had given to him, was enough to tip him over the edge into pleasure. He shuddered his release into Erik's body, lost and capsized in Erik's light eyes, gone glassy and deep-lidded with pleasure, as Erik sighed and turned his face away into the pillows. Charles, gasping, peeled himself off of Erik and rolled onto his side, taking careful not to crush him. Erik didn't like to be restrained, even with body weight, anymore.

"Thank you," Erik murmured sleepily.

Charles pressed a kiss to his hair. "You know you never need to thank me for taking care of you, my love," Charles murmured.

"No." Erik rolled onto his side, his eyes bright and lucid again. "Thank you for… for everything else. Not for the kindness, not for the love, not for the sex. Not even for killing Sebastian. For never… never wanting to mold me into what you wanted, instead of what I was. For… for the way you would have let me go, if I'd wanted to leave."

Charles swallowed. He couldn't say that Erik was welcome, because if he'd chosen to leave it would've been thoroughly _unwelcome_ indeed, but… "Of course," he managed. "Erik?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you for… for taking a chance and staying."

Erik pressed a kiss to the hollow of Charles's throat, and Charles shuddered again. He put his arms around Erik, feeling him breathe, feeling his chest rise and fall, the rhythm of his inhalations and exhalations steadying out from post-coital franticness into the steady pulse of near-sleep. Erik shifted in Charles’s arms and turned to face him, slid further down the bed so that he could tuck his sweaty forehead against Charles’s shoulder. Charles lolled about in the scent of him, the spice and the sweetness, the burst ripeness of a nursing omega, the tickling hint of want that signaled a heat waiting to creep up on them after Nina was weaned. “Charles,” Erik whispered.

“Hmm?”

“I do love you.”

Charles sighed happily. Erik said it so rarely--something else, perhaps, that Shaw had taken from the both of them, something he had made Erik say or something he had had Frost set trip wires and traps for in Erik’s mind, or perhaps just his natural reticence, as he’d never said it terribly often when they’d been happily hunting Nazis across the whole of the continent. Charles memorized the moment and filed it away in the archives of his mind, to be pulled out and worried over when things got bad. “I love you,” he said hoarsely. “I love you… more than words can encompass. More than love poetry. More than the sweet songs people sing.” Erik laughed a little. Charles closed his eyes, hearing his mirth ring out in echo, first in his mind and then in the air. “I love you so fiercely. I would do anything for you. I am yours. Yours forever.”

“Charles,” Erik sighed, and ran questing fingers over Charles’s brow. “Charles.”

Charles’s arms tightened around him, savoring the feel of Erik’s heartbeat drumming away between them. Erik was alive. And here. And in his arms. And it turned out, to his faint surprise as he slipped into sleep, that was all he’d ever really wanted out of life, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand thanks to [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame), [InsertSthMeaningful](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful), and [Kigichi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kigichi/pseuds/Kigichi) for helping me brainstorm this flaming trash pile of a fic.
> 
> [jewishstozier](https://jewishstozier.tumblr.com/)/[achlls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidwintersoldier/pseuds/achlls) made an incredible playlist based on this fic! Check it out [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5LdlqReSa1s9d4KN5BMMXu?si=L4J5CljeRbWJoMD3ptzBDg).
> 
> Because [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame) is an enabler, this fic will have an outtake where we explore what would have happened if Erik _had_ managed to carry to term before Charles found him again. Subscribe to the series (not the fic proper) for a notification!
> 
> I am at tumblr as [homoethics](https://homoethics.tumblr.com/). Please comment; constructive criticism welcome.


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